"African Swine Fever is a man-made disease"

Dr Klaus Depner and Dr Sandra Blome, of the Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut in Germany have new insights about the virus , they have studied cases and are of the opinion that “Most problems are a matter of human misbehavior.”

 African Swine Fever, it should be that the major threat with regard to the virus is not the virus itself, but how humans deal with it.Trials at the FLI showed that there is no difference in the way the ASF virus affects wild boars or domestic pigs.

Logically, one of the major questions that the researchers had when ASF was introduced in 2007 in the Caucasus was: how would the virus spread and behave in wild boars? Depner: “Essentially, we had two hypotheses.

The first one was that the disease in wild boars would die out due to the high virulence of the virus.”Blome: “Roughly, the animals get sick four days after infection.”Depner: “Usually death will follow within three to six days, .

This means that almost all infected hosts will die very quickly, which means that the virus will cease to exist very soon because it kills its host.

In that case, we would not have to worry, ASF would do its job extinguishing itself.”Blome, however, points to the fact that ASF virus is not that contagious. High viral loads are found in blood, but saliva or faeces contain less virus:

“We overestimated the contagiousness of African Swine Fever. The disease moves very slowly. When looking at affected wild boar populations, most of them have not been significantly reduced. The virus doesn’t spread that quickly at all.” Blome adds, “Wild boars shed the virus mainly when they are very sick and in the final stage of the disease.

When the animals have high fever it’s in their character to stay where they are, and they are certainly not going to walk very far when they feel bad.”Depner: “So what we have here is a virus that is very stable in its environment without fast movement. It neither dies out, nor moves.

 Undisposed carcasses of infected wild boars remain infectious for a long time in the environment and become a source of infection for healthy animals.” The human factor; its usually a case of human misbehavior. What happened is that infected meat made it to the market.

When many pigs started to die, they were sent to slaughter. Pig prices dropped, cheap meat entered the market and the meat made its way into homes – and into suitcases. This is how the virus dispersed.

 The virus spread along the main roads, the transport routes. This spread bears a 100% human mark.” Humans can be identified as having aggravated the situation ever since as well.

 Since wild boars have often been thought to be spreading the virus, in several countries attempts were launched to eradicate them – Poor bio security protocols have also been identified as cause of spread of the virus.

Bio security measures include the following; Changing clothes, working hygienically and making sure nothing from the outside reaches the inside.

 Story credit; world poultry.