Philippines introduces ASF vaccination to commercial farms
In the Philippines, the Department of Agriculture (DA) has announced it is expanding the government-controlled African swine fever (ASF) vaccine rollout nationwide.
Set to benefit are large farms and smaller herds, reports the official Philippine News Agency (PNA). They explain that the farms must request inclusion in the campaign in writing to the DA. Then officials will visit the premises to assess biosecurity standards and preparations for vaccination.
One stumbling block in the ASF vaccination campaign so far appears to be a shortage of sampling and testing capacities, according to PNA. Vaccines can only be administered to healthy growing pigs (age six weeks or more) that have tested negative for the ASF virus. This requires the collection and testing of blood samples, and there are not enough accredited labs with the capacity to handle these and the follow-up checks taken at specified intervals after vaccination.
As far as Europe is concerned, the ASF situation among Germany’s wild boar population has remained consistently high, reported Schweine at the end of October. Since July, confirmed cases have been running at around 100 per month — much higher than earlier in the year.
Over the period October 16-23, further cases of ASF were confirmed in wild boar by eight European states according to the Animal Disease Information System from the European Commission (EC) Poland and Germany each recorded 39 new cases during that week, Latvia 29 and Bulgaria 13. Smaller numbers of cases were confirmed by Hungary, Italy, Lithuania and Slovakia. So far in 2024, 21 countries in the region have confirmed to the EC a total of 5,299 ASF outbreaks in their respective wild boar populations. For comparison, the EC logged more than 7,900 outbreaks in this category in 20 countries across the region during the whole of 2023. The EC had been informed by 15 countries about cases of ASF affecting their domestic pigs, bringing the regional outbreak total in this population to 657. During the whole of last year, 16 of the region’s states recorded a total of 4,513 ASF outbreaks in this category. Outbreaks have been reported in Italy (Lombardy region), Serbia, Romania and Ukraine, among others.