The Catalan Animal Welfare Research Center has discovered four new cases of African swine fever in the middle of the Collserola mountain range (Barcelona), where mountaineers died on 26 November. The center witnessed four premature deaths this year and sent animal samples for analysis. The monitoring service has been operating 24 hours a day since 2019. Results are achieved within a few hours. These are instances on the same surveillance radio, which reassures the state and means the emergency plan is working. In all cases, four references will be analyzed at the Ministry of Agriculture center.
The carcasses of the wild boars were found one kilometer apart, near the campus of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB). These four other cases were also reported in the same area, which is reassuring to the authorities.
Agriculture, Fisheries and Food Advisor Oscar Ordig, in an interview with RAC 1 compiled by the Europa News Agency, asked the city to take responsibility for avoiding the affected area: “With a vehicle, with a bicycle, with a foot on a biologically contaminated material from an animal, the disease can escape.” He warned that “the economic impact will be great and there is no need to hide it,” and said that the population area is very large, and therefore there is a lack of cooperation from the whole world. He stressed: “We do not know if there are other infected hairs, and therefore there is a lack of monitoring and control work in the area.”
The Catalonia Department of Agriculture has set a radius of six kilometres, starting from the point of Cerdanyola where the first cases occurred.