GUWAHATI: Assam agriculture and veterinary minister Atul Bora said on Tuesday that the mysterious deaths of over 2,000 pigs in six districts of the state is suspected to be due to the highly contagious African Swine Fever (ASF), which might have travelled from Tibet in China through Arunachal Pradesh.

“We are waiting for the confirmatory reports from National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases in Bhopal but our veterinary doctors suspect that the deaths could be due to African Swine Fever,” Bora said.

“This is a foreign virus and we suspect that it might have come from Tibet. First, pigs in Arunachal Pradesh died of it in the first week of April. Many villagers there threw the dead pigs into the river, which flows down to Assam and that is why Jonai in Dhemaji district which borders Arunachal Pradesh reported the first pig deaths in Assam,” Bora added.

On April 25, the death toll was 1964, which has climbed to 2,262 in three days. “This virus spreads very fast and even human beings are carriers but due to the lockdown, the transmission might have slowed down,” Bora said.

The state government had on Saturday banned purchase and sale of pigs and pork, closed down all slaughter houses and banned movement of people in contact with pig farms from one place to another.

He said, “This is a season for swine flu in Assam and we have vaccinated the animals against the Classical Swine Fever, many did not survive.” The six affected districts are Sivasagar, Dhemaji, Lakhimpur, Dibrugarh, Jorhat and Biswanath districts.”

Piggery is a flourishing economic activity in the state and according to a census in 2019, the population of pigs in farms waa 21 lakh. “We have asked for another census but we estimate the population today would be double of 2019 figure,” Bora said.

He said that there are another 800 wild pigs in the state’s national parks and wildlife sanctuaries.

The World Organization for Animal Health in its current ASF situation report has cited that in Asia, China has reported six outbreaks of the disease in Chongking, Gansu, Sichuan and Inner Mongolia.

The ASF was first detected in Kenya in 1909, which spread across Europe and the Americas in the 1960s-80s. In 2018, Shenyang region in China reported the first outbreak of the virus in Asia after which, the disease started spreading to Philippines, Vietnam, East Timor and South Korea.

The virus is spread to pigs, warthogs and wild boars through ticks and causes the animal to suffer fever, fatigue, difficulty in breathing, skin discolourations, blood clots, diarrhoea, vomiting and usually, death within ten days.

African Swine Fever explainer

(Source: World Organization for Animal Health)

* African swine fever (ASF) is a severe viral disease affecting domestic and wild pigs

* It is responsible for serious production and economic losses

* This trans boundary animal disease (TAD) can be spread by live or dead pigs, domestic or wild, and pork products. Transmission can also occur via contaminated feed and fomites (non-living objects) such as shoes, clothes, vehicles, knives, equipment etc., due to the high environmental resistance of ASF virus

* There is no approved vaccine against ASF (unlike classical swine fever (‘Hog Cholera’) which is caused by a different virus)