A CATALUNYA laboratory that’s being expanded could be ground zero for the outbreak of swine fever affecting Spain.
The country this week declared a state of emergency over the infection that causes animals to bleed internally.
The virus has no known vaccine or cure, but is generally not fatal to humans.
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The focus has been turned to the Centre for Research in Animal Health(CReSA) in the Bellaterra area of Barcelona province.
At least 13 wild boars have tested positive for swine fever outside the Catalan capital.
The El Pais newspaper reported that in late November, a wild boar died of the disease just a few hundred metres away from the centre where swine fever is studied.
Building work on an extension at the facility started in September including a high-security laboratory.
El Pais contacted the CReSA to ask whether construction could weaken security protocols but did not receive an answer.
It reported that on Wednesday, work was continuing on the site with around a dozen people involved and two police officers guarding the work site.
The CReSA is a leading animal health research centre with a biocontainment unit of 4,500 m2 plus six laboratories with a high biosafety level to deal with viruses like swine fever.
Ironically, the head of the CreSA’s biocontainment unit, Xavier Abad, posted on social media on November 14 that ‘accidents in laboratories or in facilities that handle pathogens exist’.
It’s not been determined how swine fever arrived in the Barcelona area.
One scenario put forward by the Ministry of Agriculture is that it arrived via contaminated foreign food thrown in the trash and eaten by wild boars.
Genetic analysis has shown that the swine fever strain is different to those currently recorded in other European countries.
It is more akin to one recorded in Georgia in 2007 and CreSA scientists are working with similar strains supplied to them by the UK’s Pirbright Institute.
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