ILOILO City – Two more towns have been added to the list of areas hit by African Swine Fever (ASF) in Iloilo province. These are Alimodian and Leganes in the 2nd District.
The laboratory test of samples taken from a backyard hog farm in Barangay MV Hechanova, Leganes and another in Barangay Buhay, Alimodian came out positive for the hog disease, said Dr. Darel Tabuada, Iloilo provincial veterinarian.
All the hog heads in the infected backyard farms were immediately depopulated, said Tabuda, and border control was also established within the .5-kilometer radius of the infected farms.
All hog farms within the radius will also be depopulated, he stressed.
“Kon ma-clear na naton ang .5 kilometer radius nga malimpyuhan na naton, we will extend our border control to one kilometer radius to do the surveillance,” the provincial veterinarian said.
The ASF cases in Alimodian and Leganes were discovered due to the reporting of their municipal agriculture offices (MAOs) of unexplained mortalities in the two farms.
Based on Administrative Order 52 of the Department of Agriculture (DA), Tabuad said, they are revising their approach on the zoning of positive cases. If the case is logged in one area or site only, they will only declare as “red zone” the area within the .5-kilometer radius.
The whole town will only be declared a red zone if there are succeeding positive cases outside the .5-kilometer radius or in other barangays of the town, said Tabuada.
With this, the whole towns of Alimodian and Leganes could not be declared red zones yet but only the area within the .5 kilometer radius in barangays MV Hechanova and Buhay, respectively.
Tabuada said they also conducted surveillance and testing in a hog farm in one more town that is currently classified a pink zone.
He refrained, for the meantime, from naming the town pending the result of the laboratory test.
To date, there are four towns in Iloilo province with positive cases of ASF.
The first two towns were Oton and San Miguel that are already marked as red zones./PN
