SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea raised the country’s foot-and-mouth alert by one notch to curb wider spread of the contagious virus ahead of the Lunar New Year holidays, its agriculture ministry said on Wednesday.

The heightened alert comes as a second case of foot-and-mouth disease was detected on Tuesday at a cattle farm in Anseong city, southeast of the capital Seoul, where the first case in nearly a year was reported at a dairy cow farm on Monday.

Two cases were confirmed to be the O-type virus, which the country vaccinates all cattle and hogs, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said in a statement. Over 200 cows raised at the two farms had been slaughtered.

The ministry said it will take stricter quarantine measures including an emergency vaccination near the affected areas to prevent the virus from spreading further.