LEV\u00c9L, Hungary (AP) \u2014 Authorities in several countries in Central Europe are working to contain an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease among cattle populations that has caused widespread border closures and required the killing of thousands of animals. <\/p>\n
The outbreak was first detected on a cattle farm in northwestern Hungary in early March, and animals on three farms in neighboring Slovakia tested positive for the highly transmissible virus two weeks later. <\/p>\n
Since then, animals from an additional three farms in Hungary and another three in Slovakia have tested positive for the virus, the first outbreak of the disease in either country in more than half a century. <\/p>\n
\u201cEverything is completely upside down\u201d in the area as farmers fear for their own herds and transportation is disrupted by border closures, said S\u00e1ndor Szoboszlai, a local entrepreneur and hunter in the Hungarian town of Lev\u00e9l where nearly 3,000 cattle had to be culled after the disease was discovered on a farm.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t even think such a thing could happen. Who could count on that? Nobody,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are big farms in the area, but I don\u2019t think it was the fault of the animal owners, that\u2019s for sure. The wind blew it here.\u201d<\/p>\n
Foot-and-mouth disease primarily affects cloven-hooved animals like cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and deer, and results in fevers and blisters in the mouth and hooves. The virus spreads through contact between animals, or on surfaces like clothing, skin and vehicles, or on the wind. It poses little danger to humans. <\/p>\n
On Friday, authorities in Hungary continued to conduct operations aimed at stopping the spread of the disease and disinfecting affected farms and vehicles in the area. Mats doused in a powerful disinfectant were placed at the entrances and exits of towns and villages across the region to eliminate virus molecules that may cling to tires \u2014 though many of those mats quickly went dry and were swept partially off the road by passing vehicles. <\/p>\n
This week, the Slovakian government, citing insufficient containment measures by Hungary, closed 16 of their common borders and one with Austria, all of them lesser-trafficked crossings so authorities can focus on conducting border checks at the major ones. Last week, Austria \u2014 where there have been no reported cases \u2014 closed 23 of its border crossings with Hungary and Slovakia. <\/p>\n
Authorities in the Czech Republic, relatively distant from the Hungarian and Slovakian farms where the disease has been detected, have introduced disinfection measures at all the five border crossings used by freight trucks entering the country.<\/p>\n
Jiri Cerny, associate professor at the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague, said the most significant risk of transmission is \u201cthrough contaminated human objects\u201d such as \u201dtires and cars, on the soles of shoes, and through contaminated food.\u201d The Czech Agriculture Minister, Marek V\u00fdborn\u00fd, has said the restrictions could be lifted 30 days after the last farm animal infected with foot-and-mouth disease has been culled in Slovakia.<\/p>\n
No new infections have been discovered in Hungary this week, and the cleanup of the last infected farms will likely be completed on Saturday, Istv\u00e1n Nagy, Hungary\u2019s agricultural minister said on Friday. <\/p>\n
Earlier this week, a Hungarian official said in a news conference that the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak may have been caused by \u201can artificially produced virus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Without citing specific evidence to back his claims, Gergely Guly\u00e1s, chief of staff to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n, said it couldn\u2019t be ruled out that the disease had been released in Hungary as a \u201cbiological attack,\u201d adding that the suspicion was based on verbal statements from a laboratory in a foreign country that had begun initial analysis of viral samples. <\/p>\n
Hungary\u2019s government has promised to institute a loan payment moratorium for affected farmers, and to help compensate them for the loss of their animals and assist in developing measures on farms to prevent future outbreaks. <\/p>\n
Szoboszlai, the hunter in Lev\u00e9l, choked up when speaking about the local farmer who had to cull his entire herd when the virus appeared, saying the situation was \u201cterrible.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel so sorry for him, because this is his life\u2019s work,\u201d he said. \u201cIt will be very difficult to start over.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Karel Janicek and Stanislav Hodina in Prague, Czech Republic, contributed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LEV\u00c9L, Hungary (AP) \u2014 Authorities in several countries in Central Europe are working to contain an outbreak of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[933,7907,51,3032,10692,2000,5215,299,5187,4179,105,2190,10693,10691,10696,2558,10694,10695,1781,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-15687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-animals","9":"tag-austria","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-czech-republic","12":"tag-disease-outbreaks","13":"tag-eu","14":"tag-eurocopa-2024","15":"tag-europe","16":"tag-european","17":"tag-general-news","18":"tag-health","19":"tag-hungary","20":"tag-hungary-government","21":"tag-livestock-diseases","22":"tag-marek-vyborny","23":"tag-slovakia","24":"tag-slovakia-government","25":"tag-stanislav-hodina","26":"tag-viktor-orban","27":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114329018911721704","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}