First African swine fever outbreak in southern Dambovita County

The southern County of Dambovita recorded its first African swine fever outbreak, and authorities have summoned the Local Centre for Combating Disease, on Sunday told AGERPRES the Dambovita DSVSA (Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Directorate) director Sandu Tolea.

When quizzed about this outbreak, Tolea answered: "I cannot give you any further information since we are during a meeting of the Local Centre for Combating Disease."

Out of the first information, the authorities were being alerted after a local citizen lost two pigs to this disease.

The African swine fever evolves in as many as 207 localities of 12 counties, with over 898 outbreaks (out of which 13 in industrial units, one in a farm's slaughterhouse and another in an A-type commercial exploitation) and 57 cases of wild boars, on Thursday announced the National Sanitary Veterinary Food Safety Authority (ANSVSA).

Overall, 232,722 ill pigs were culled since the date the virus's presence in Romania was first confirmed, on 31 July 2017, in northern County of Satu Mare.

Satu Mare, Salaj, Bihor (northern Romania), Tulcea, Constanta, Braila, Ialomita, Galati, Calarasi, Ilfov, Buzau and Giurgiu (south-eastern Romania) are the 12 counties affected by the ASF.

The first ASF outbreaks occurred in January 2018, in four households of Micula commune were eradicated on 13 August 2018 and on 24 August so was an outbreak in Sarauad, all in Satu Mare County.

The President of the Oversight Committee for the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) Claudiu Manda on Friday stated that SRI head Eduard Hellvig maintained he had conveyed the first piece of information related to the danger of the African swine fever to the legal beneficiaries in June 2016.