Following fears that three Israelis who recently returned from Denmark and are positive for the coronavirus are carrying the mutated variation of COVID-19 which has infected the country’s minks, the Health Ministry announced on Monday that anyone entering Israel from Denmark must immediately enter quarantine.

The ministry also said that all Israelis returning from Denmark will be tested for the coronavirus, including genetic sequencing, in order to determine whether they’re carrying the mutant coronavirus. The three COVID-positive travelers have been tested but their results have not yet been received.

Despite the hullabaloo, the Health Ministry reassured Israelis that the likelihood of the mutant coronavirus being brought into Israel is very low. “There’s only a small number of patients infected with the mutant virus in all of Denmark and they’re in quarantine. The likelihood that a patient carrying the mutation has arrived in Israel is low but we are nevertheless taking extra precautions.”

“The Health Ministry, in cooperation with the Home Front Command, has issued a list of passengers who returned from Denmark and are contacting them this morning to carry out testing. Until the results are received, all passengers from Denmark are requested to enter quarantine. Denmark has been added to the list of ‘red’ countries.”

A mutated variation of the coronavirus has infected minks farmed for their fur in Denmark, sending over a quarter of million Danes in the northern region of the country into lockdown. The Danish government has ordered the cull of all 15 million minks bred at Denmark’s 1,139 mink farms.

Twelve Danes have tested positive for the mutated coronavirus but health authorities believe that the actual number of those infected is much greater. According to the WHO, these are the first reported cases of animal-to-human transmission.

Some scientists have warned that the discovery of the coronavirus mutation could cause a new pandemic.

“The worst-case scenario is that we would start off a new pandemic in Denmark,” Prof. Kare Molbak, a vaccine expert and director of infectious diseases at Denmark’s State Serum Institute, told The Guardian.

“There’s a risk that this mutated virus is so different from the others that we’d have to put new things in a vaccine and therefore [the mutation] would slam us all in the whole world back to the start.”

“We have a great responsibility towards our own population, but with the mutation that has now been found, we have an even greater responsibility for the rest of the world as well,” Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)