Significantly more cases than in 2020

There has been evidence of African swine fever(ASF) in 13 European countries so far this year. According to the Friedlich-Loeffler-Institut(FLI), based on data from the Animal Disease Notification System(ADNS), a total of 11,755 infections have been detected in wild and domestic pigs in the European Union, including Serbia, Moldova and Ukraine, as of last Friday. Russia is not included in these statistics. In the whole of 2020, there had been 12,315 outbreaks of ASF; this level is expected to be exceeded this month. In domestic pigs, the number of currently reported ASF outbreaks is already well above last year's level of 1,241 cases, at 1,676. The inglorious front-runner here is Romania with 1,495 detections; this was 42% more than in the whole of last year. In Poland, 119 cases of ASF have been reported in domestic pig herds so far this year, compared to 103 in 2020. In Serbia, outbreaks have doubled from 16 to 32 cases. In Germany, the three cases detected in July in holdings in Brandenburg have been the only ones reported so far. In terms of disease incidence in the wild boar population, there had been a total of 11,074 detections of ASF in 2020, according to the FLI; at the beginning of November 2021, the number of positive findings was 10,079. Hungary accounted for most of these, with 2,474; it was closely followed by Poland with 2,311 and Germany with 2,198 infections in the black boars. Disappeared from the list of ASF cases are Belgium and Greece. In Bulgaria, the spread of the animal disease in the wild boar population has noticeably decreased from 533 cases in the previous year to 202 most recently; in Slovakia, on the other hand, there has been a significant increase from 388 to 1,498 cases of ASF. In China, according to scientists of the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute of the Chinese Academy for Agricultural Science(CAAS), the occurrence of ASF viruses of genotype I has meanwhile also been detected. This was common in Portugal and Spain for several decades in the 20th century and is currently endemic on the Italian island of Sardinia. According to the researchers, this type of virus is of lower virulence and is characterised by a chronic clinical picture with necrotic skin lesions and joint swelling. Infected pigs can be more easily missed in the early stages of an outbreak and the effect of a potential vaccine based on genotype II is likely to be very limited, according to the scientists.