ASF Research Moves Forward in Vietnam in Spite of COVID-19

Farmscape for December 14, 2020

The Swine Health Information Center reports, in spite of disruptions caused by COVID-19, African Swine Fever research continues to move forward in Vietnam.
To gain a better understanding of African Swine Fever in an effort to develop prevention and control strategies before an outbreak in North America, the Swine Health Information Center has been coordinating a multi-phase program on the ground in Vietnam where the infection can be studied in real time.
SHIC Executive Director Dr. Paul Sundberg says it includes a variety of projects.

Clip-Dr. Paul Sundberg-Swine Health Information Center:
We're looking at for example routes of introduction onto the farms.
We're looking at epidemiological surveys to identify routes of introduction onto farms.
As well another route possibly could be infected boar studs so we're looking at the risk of infected boar studs.
We're looking at risks from mice and rats to see if they carry ASF on their feet or on their fur and can transmit that.
We're looking at the use of oral fluids.
That's an extremely important project in Vietnam because right now our only live sample that we can take from pigs for surveillance is whole blood and that's a difficult sample to take.
We want to get to the spot where we have enough data that would support an analysis of the use of oral fluids for ASF surveillance and monitoring.
There's a variety of different other ones.
All of these projects are underway.
There have been some hiccups because of the COVID-19 epidemic but they've by and large been overcome.
We've had to have some flexibility, had to go down a different route.
When Plan A didn't work, we went to Plan B.
All of these projects are now ongoing in Vietnam, the oral fluids ones included and we’re looking forward to getting preliminary results from many of them and final results from a few in the very near future.

For detailed results of these projects access swinehealth.org.
For more visit Farmscape.Ca.
Bruce Cochrane.

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