Assessing the extent of community spread caused by mink-derived SARS-CoV-2 variants

SARS-CoV-2 has recently been found to have spread from humans to minks and then to have transmitted back to humans. However, it is unknown to what extent the human-to-human transmission caused by the variant has reached. Here, we used publicly available SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences from both humans and minks collected in Denmark and the Netherlands, and combined phylogenetic analysis with Bayesian inference under an epidemiological model, to trace the possibility of person-to-person transmission. The results showed that at least 12.5% of all people being infected with dominated mink-derived SARS-CoV-2 variants in Denmark and the Netherlands were caused by human-to-human transmission, indicating that this “back-to-human” SARS-CoV-2 variant has already caused human-to-human transmission. Our study also indicated the need for monitoring this mink-derived and other animal source “back-to-human” SARS-CoV-2 in future and that prevention and control measures should be tailored to avoid large-scale community transmission caused by the virus jumping between animals and humans.