African swine fever kills more than 1,000 pigs in southern Philippines
Xinhua
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(Photo: CGTN)

An outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) in Davao Occidental province in southern Philippines has killed more than 1,000 pigs, local officials in the Mindanao region said on Saturday. 

"This is the first ASF case in the entire Mindanao (island)," Liza Mazo, the regional director of the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) in the Davao region, said in a report. 

Mazo reported that the regional Department of Agriculture (DA) office confirmed on Friday the entry of the ASF in the municipality of Don Marcelino, a coastal town in Davao Occidental. 

Don Marcelino Mayor Michael Maruya in a memorandum on Friday said pigs in the town's eight villages have been infected with the ASF. He added that the DA has recommended a temporary lockdown on the villages to prevent the spread of the virus. 

Mindanao Development Authority chair Manny Pinol said an investigation is underway to find out "how and why the ASF got to the remote town." 

"What needs to be done now is to contain the spread of the disease by immediately implementing quarantine measures," Pinol said in a Facebook post on Saturday.

Pinol also added that the OCD in the Davao region has called for an emergency meeting on Monday to address the reported outbreak. 

Don Marcelino is a coastal town facing the Davao Gulf and has only one major access road, he added, wondering how the ASF infected the pigs. 

On September 9 last year, the Department of Agriculture confirmed the first ASF outbreak in the Philippines. Thousands of pigs have been culled in backyard farms in Metro Manila and other provinces in the main Luzon Island, including Bulacan, Rizal, Pampanga and Pangasinan. 

To prevent the spread of the disease, the Philippines is implementing the so-called 1-7-10 protocol, meaning that all pigs within 1-km radius of infected farms will be culled while movement of pigs and its products will be limited and under strict surveillance and testing within a 7-km radius. 

The protocol also imposes that swine farms within a 10-km radius will be required to submit a mandatory report on the disease. 

ASF is harmless to human beings but highly contagious and fatal for pigs as there is no known cure. The disease has up to 100 percent fatality rate.

Hogs remain the main source of meat in the Philippines, and about 64 percent of the swine population is raised in backyard farms.