The bluetongue disease has not yet been eradicated in the medium term, said Agriculture Minister Femke Wiersma in a letter to Parliament. Of the 6,352 farms that turned out to be positive in the PCR test, 4,029 were cattle farms. That is almost twice as many as the 2,144 infections on sheep farms.
According to the latest data on the website of the National Service for Entrepreneurs, the number of bluetongue infections confirmed by PCR test has increased to 6,635. In addition, 2,072 diseases were diagnosed based on clinical symptoms. This is 425 more than last week. So the decline in the number of new infections has stopped. Last week, 402 new infections were added.
The question remains whether bluetongue virus serotype 3 (BTV-3) can be treated as well as serotype 8, which occurred in the Netherlands from 2006 to 2012. A voluntary vaccination program against BTV-8 started in 2008 and in the spring of 2012 the Netherlands was free of the blue language again.
According to the report of the expert group, the BTV-8 epidemic situation cannot be compared to the BTV-3 situation. The vaccination campaign started two years after the outbreak, meaning that many cattle and sheep may have already come into contact with the blue tongue.
Viremia cannot be prevented
In addition, the vaccine against BTV-8 may prevent viremia – the presence of the virus in the blood. The current BTV-3 vaccines reduce viremia, but they do not prevent it completely. It will therefore not be possible to eradicate the BTV-3 virus from the Netherlands and the surrounding countries in the short to medium term. And with BTV-8 it also took more than three years before the Netherlands was virus free.
The fact that the current BTV-3 vaccines do not completely prevent viremia, together with the fact that it is more severe, is the reason that it is not possible to prevent the symptoms of the disease completely. In vaccinated sheep and cattle, the symptoms are less severe and more animals recover.
The number of dead animals has increased significantly this summer. At first this mainly concerned sheep, but later also cattle. The total amount per week in August was four to five times higher for sheep and twice higher for cattle than Rendac collected on average during this period in previous years.
The figures from the last few weeks show a reduction in the number of dead animals collected. This decline is greatest in sheep, the decline has now been visible for four weeks. And a downward trend also seems to have started in cattle last week.
All of Holland and much of Europe is infected
Diseases with the blue tongue first occurred mainly in Gelderland, Overijssel, North Brabant and Limburg. In the area where there was the largest number of infections last year, the center and north-west of the country, there were much fewer reports at first. Diseases have now occurred throughout the country. Mainly on sheep and cattle farms, less often on goat farms and sometimes on alpacas.
BTV-3 infections have also been reported in the following countries: Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Denmark, Portugal, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Norway, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom United. Bluetongue has spread rapidly across large parts of Europe this year. The BTV-3 virus that causes the diseases is currently the same as last year, according to a study by Wageningen Bioveterinary Research.
2024-09-26 12:34:00
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