CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – In Central Luzon where government agencies culled 6,011 pigs stricken with the Ebola Reston virus last February, agriculture officials continued to monitor the situation, finding no new cases even before the journal Science confirmed the presence of the virus in Philippine pigs.
Dr. Romeo Manalili, Department of Agriculture’s regional quarantine officer, said several experts from the United States arrived last June to get blood samples from bats found in the hog farm in Pandi, Bulacan where the mass culling took place.
“The samples were taken to the US for laboratory exams. The results have not been transmitted yet,” Manalili said in a phone interview.
The DA’s Bureau of Animal Industry is set to expand the surveillance of virus once testing kits from the World Health Organization arrive, he said.
No new cases have cropped up since after the mass pig culling in Pandi, according to Dr. Eduardo Lapuz, chief of the DA’s animal disease diagnostic laboratory.
The Pandi farm has remained “empty” to date, Lapuz said.
The Pandi incident has been “resolved already,” said Dr. Rio Magpantay, regional director of the Department of Health. That means all swine in the Pandi farm had been killed, properly handled and buried according to WHO protocol.
A 70-person team from the BAI, police, farm workers and health volunteers implemented that task, the first to be carried out in the Philippines.
Animal activists were tapped to monitor the culling at every step of the way, the DOH reported then.
The virus was found in several pigs in the Pandi farm last November and eventually among six farm workers there.
Non-fatal, the virus exhibited through mild-flu symptoms.
BAI Director Davino Catbagan had said the virus was first detected among monkeys in Laguna in 1989 up to 1992. He said government veterinarians continued to study how the virus was transmitted from monkeys to pigs.
The BAI discovered the virus when it sent 28 samples of pig tissues brought to a US laboratory for testing of what strain of porsine circo virus was affected some hog-cholera stricken pigs in Pandi and another farm in Manaoag, Pangasinan.
Dr. Romeo Manalili, Department of Agriculture’s regional quarantine officer, said several experts from the United States arrived last June to get blood samples from bats found in the hog farm in Pandi, Bulacan where the mass culling took place.
“The samples were taken to the US for laboratory exams. The results have not been transmitted yet,” Manalili said in a phone interview.
The DA’s Bureau of Animal Industry is set to expand the surveillance of virus once testing kits from the World Health Organization arrive, he said.
No new cases have cropped up since after the mass pig culling in Pandi, according to Dr. Eduardo Lapuz, chief of the DA’s animal disease diagnostic laboratory.
The Pandi farm has remained “empty” to date, Lapuz said.
The Pandi incident has been “resolved already,” said Dr. Rio Magpantay, regional director of the Department of Health. That means all swine in the Pandi farm had been killed, properly handled and buried according to WHO protocol.
A 70-person team from the BAI, police, farm workers and health volunteers implemented that task, the first to be carried out in the Philippines.
Animal activists were tapped to monitor the culling at every step of the way, the DOH reported then.
The virus was found in several pigs in the Pandi farm last November and eventually among six farm workers there.
Non-fatal, the virus exhibited through mild-flu symptoms.
BAI Director Davino Catbagan had said the virus was first detected among monkeys in Laguna in 1989 up to 1992. He said government veterinarians continued to study how the virus was transmitted from monkeys to pigs.
The BAI discovered the virus when it sent 28 samples of pig tissues brought to a US laboratory for testing of what strain of porsine circo virus was affected some hog-cholera stricken pigs in Pandi and another farm in Manaoag, Pangasinan.
