In the four months since ASF was first detected in Latvia, the virus has been confirmed in 110 wild boar, as well as in 32 pig pens at homesteading farms. In September, however, only a single domestic pig was confirmed to have caught the disease, which is deadly to swine but not humans.
The sharp drop in the number of domestic pigs infected shows that the PVD has managed to get beyond the first acute phase of the disease’s spread across Latvia’s eastern Latgale and northern Vidzeme provinces, prompting the government to expand the state-of-emergency to the eastern Gulf of Riga coast and Riga’s eastbound suburban districts.
However, it is clear that ASF keeps spreading amongst Latvia’s wild boar populations. Although hunters have been promised compensations for each specimen brought in, Oļševskis pointed out that this has not been a strong motive for hunting clubs to increase their activity.
