An outbreak of African swine fever in Indonesia’s North Sumatra province has been detected by laboratory tests carried out after the deaths of thousands of pigs in the area this week, according to a report by Reuters.
ASF has not yet been formally confirmed and the picture remains cloudy. A provincial official said on Wednesday that more than 4,000 pigs had died after an outbreak of classical swine fever, also known as hog cholera. Classical swine fever was first detected in September in the province’s Dairi district, the official said.
But Fadjar Sumping Tjatur Rassa, the agriculture ministry’s director of animal health, told Reuters that ‘clinical symptoms and laboratory test results point to African swine fever’, although there are also samples that are positive for hog cholera. \
He could not say how many of the pigs deaths may have been caused by ASF. “For the ASF, of concern is the economic loss because of its rapid spread and its high mortality rate,” he said, adding that both classical swine flu and ASF did not infect humans.
He said the government had implemented bio-security measures in the affected areas by ordering authorities to immediately bury pig carcasses and disinfect areas to prevent the virus spreading.