A recent article by Katharina Zimmer in The Scientist focused on the development of a vaccine for the prevention of African swine fever. It provides an analysis of specific types of swine fever that are common in East Africa.
At the beginning of the article, it is noted that the immunologist of Kansas State University, Whitehack Mwangi, was one of the first to study the swine fever virus during its outbreak in East Asia in the fall of 2017.
The strain of the Georgia 2007 virus was particularly deadly. Pigs died of fatal hemorrhagic fever within a week after infection.
The Rostov Regional Animal Disease Control Station was included in the Russian Book of Records as the largest veterinary organization. It consists of 40 inter-district veterinary laboratories and 46 regional branches, with a total of 2,400 employees
A year later, another outbreak of the same virus was reported in Shenyang, China. This outbreak was disastrous and resulted in the death of approximately 200 million pigs.
The president of the assembly of delegates to the World Organization for Animal Health announced that about a quarter of the world's pig population could die from the disease.
Outbreaks have also been reported in East Asia, where the virus has infected wild boars and domestic pigs. They can become infected through the bites of warthog mites or through contaminated food and materials. Also, the virus is transmitted through the contact of healthy domestic pigs with wild animals.
The first outbreak of African plague was reported in Africa in the early 20th century. Then the virus entered Portugal where it was successfully localized. For a long time, the virus did not receive the attention it deserves.
Then in 2007 a strain of the genotype 2 virus was registered in Georgia. In 2019, it was one of the deadliest outbreaks of animal diseases in the world, and countries began to conduct new research on vaccine development.
- Over the weekend, the South Korean authorities conducted a massive operation to select 47 thousand pigs near the North Korean border in an attempt to prevent the spread of African swine fever in the country.
- Vietnam rejected nearly 10% of its pig population in order to contain the outbreak of African swine fever, which began to hit large industrial farms, the government said in a statement.
- The number of new outbreaks of African swine fever in China has fallen significantly this year, and pig farming is gradually returning to normal, the country's vice minister of agriculture said amid recent reports highlighting the threat of the disease.
