CDC confirms 4 Americans got Coronavirus from Mink; here is all you need to know about the first animal-to-human transmission of COVID virus - Times of India
The US health agency recently revealed that a variant of COVID witnessed majorly in mink in 2020 had infected at least four Americans.
COVID-19 causing coronavirus belongs to a large family of viruses called coronavirus. As per the information available on the website of the CDC, some coronaviruses cause cold-like illnesses in people, while others cause illness in certain types of animals.
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV) also belong to this family. All of these viruses are zoonotic, which means they can be transmitted between animals and people. SARS-CoV was transferred from civet cats to humans and MERS-CoV from dromedary camels. In the case of COVID-19, this is the first evidence of animal to human transmission in the US. Till now only speculations were made, no concrete conclusions were drawn from them. A lot more research is needed in this area to understand the complexity of the situation.
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