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African swine fever

Piggy’s Pain – While people are fighting against coronavirus, pigs are also facing a widespread outbreak of African Swine Fever (ASF), a highly contagious disease amongst domestic pigs and wild boars. Infected pigs have a morbidity and mortality rate of nearly 100%, making it necessary to eradicate a large number of high risk pigs to control the disease.

African swine fever is caused by the Asfivirus group, which is a DNA virus highly resistant to temperature and acid-based conditions. It survives in the environment for a long time even after the pig dies. The virus can live for a month in the blood at 37 degrees Celsius, 3-6 months in processed pork like ham and uncooked sausages, and up to a year in frozen pork. Disinfection requires high temperatures above 60 degrees Celsius.

There is currently no medicine or vaccine to prevent the outbreak. The disease can be spread through contact with secretions, breathing, eating contaminated food, and ticks that suck blood from infected pigs and flies. In addition, humans can be a carrier of this disease through contact with secretions, pig droppings and infected tissues, germs on clothes and shoes, farm equipment, food, and vehicles. These all can spread the virus within the farm or cross the countries to healthy pigs.

Although African swine fever (ASF) is not infectious to humans and animals, pathogens in raw pork can cause sickness. Always cook pork with high heat and avoid eating raw and undercooked pork to prevent other pork-related diseases.

Source:
https://www.thepigsite.com/diseas…/african-swine-fever-asf
https://www.cpc-ccp.com/asf-virus-and-symptoms
https://www.fao.org/3/Y0510E/Y0510E02.htm