Having been locked up since May, the Aragonese authorities have decided that the nearly 93,000 views held by the farms of Puebla de Valverde should be sacrificed for the spread of COVID-19 among the animals stacked in the enclosure. When seven of the farm workers tested positive in May, tests were carried out on the animals, including several infections. After the confirmation of the workers, the tests carried out these days have shown that the miners living in the cages, instead of decreasing the positive ones, have become widespread.

Despite the fact that visons, fireflies, ferrets and other mustelids are animals that are far from us in human eyes, it has already been shown that we have a closeness that can spread COVID-19: in May the authorities killed 10,000 visons on farms in the Netherlands for cases of contagion. Now the Aragonese farms are in conflict with those across Europe, as 39 million visons for the leather industry are growing on the continent.

What's the problem with mustelids? One of them may be the one that has mediated in the transformation of the virus SARS-CoV-2, which in its origin lives in a Chinese bat, to reach from it to the human being. In these months, more than one suspect intermediate species has been mentioned, starting with the pangolin, which at first became so popular. Most experts have discarded the hypothesis of pangoline, in Spanish civeta and in French civette the Asian ‘Paradoxurus hermaphroditus’ as well as raccoon have been cited.

Since the problem of Dutch farms, the hypothesis of the mustélids has gained more and more strength. From this family are the American Visons that grow for leather, our European Visons, ferrets... Now the case of Aragon is going to give more strength to this line of research.

The Mustélids have been able, as it is said these days in the main press, to transform such plentiful farms in China to pick up the bat virus and pass it on to human beings. But the clue of the mustelids can also blow with the alternative hypothesis of the origin of the virus SARS-CoV-2, according to which the virus was manipulated in some laboratory, until it takes the form it has today. In addition to the famous Wuhan laboratory in China, viruses are also manipulated in other parts of the world, both to prevent new pandemic risks with the aim of creating remedies... and to develop weapons of bacteriological warfare. And in those manipulations, these animalitos of the family of the mustelids play an important role.

One of the articles in the Additional Guide that ARGIA will distribute in August will address this hypothesis: "What if COVID-19 is a GMO? ".