HEAL ▶▶▶TH Figure 2 - Where did Belgium’s outbreaks take place?
LUXEMBOURG
BELGIUM
FRANCE
29km
Green: Closest to France (1.1km) Dark blue: Closest to Luxembourg (3.3km) Blue: First outbreak, Sept 9, 2018, near Étalle. Red: Last ‘fresh’ outbreak, August 11, 2019, near Saint-Léger.
Source: Pig Progress on the basis of OIE data.
Eradication in Belgium No wonder then that Belgium is currently hoping for a similar smooth process to get its “free from ASF” status back again. The country is hoping that the European Commission will start counting from the date of the last fresh carcass. Truth be told, Belgium has followed a pretty similar path to that of the Czech Republic. After all, the virus has been found only in the wild boar population. Hundreds of kilometres of fences were used to stop the movement of wild boar – not only in Belgium, but also along the borders in neighbouring France and Luxembourg. Preventive culling was widely done in northern France as well. Obviously, doing everything by the book proved to be a chal- lenge. For instance, it was impossible to completely fence off areas as there were also through roads and even motorways crossing the infected zones. In addition, the forests in southern Belgium are not the habitat of wild boar alone – they are also used and frequented by other industries such as tourism and forestry. Although forests can be closed temporarily or partially,
10 ▶PIG PROGRESS | Volume 36, No. 6, 2020
a permanent closure would have been disastrous to the econo- my, so the measures applied always had to be a compromise. At its largest, the infected area measured 27km north to south and 29km east to west. Especially in February 2019, Eu- rope held its breath when the outbreaks reached a peak of 217 dead positive wild boar (see Figure 2). Near Messancy, in the eastern part of the infected area, on 13 February 2019 the virus was found 3.3km from the border with Luxembourg. Similarly, it came within 1.1km of the French border near the village Sommethonne a few days later, on 17 February 2019. In both cases, however, the virus was not reported from the other side of the borders, keeping the countries Luxembourg and France free from ASF. From March 2019, the outbreaks decreased – dropping to be- low 10 per month in June 2019 until 11 August, when the young gilt met her untimely end, near Saint-Léger. Now Bel- gium is hoping that that will be seen by everyone as the last case and that by October 2020, this nightmare will finally be over.
27km
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