How Is African Swine Fever Detected? A Detailed Explanation of Common Testing Methods
We have already summarized the topic of African swine fever for you many times, but questions still come up quite often. For example, how is African swine fever detected? This is very important, so let's take a look!
1. How Is African Swine Fever Detected
Check the growth condition of all pigs every day, take samples from feces, nasal fluid and so on, and place them in sterilized test tubes. Spleens and lymph nodes that show pathological changes to the naked eye or show no obvious changes should all be within the scope of collected samples. Then send them to the relevant quarantine station for testing and deal with any problems that arise in a timely manner.
2. Vaccine Development
On May 24, 2019, the African swine fever vaccine independently developed by the Harbin Veterinary Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences achieved stage results. China mainly made five advances during the stage of creating an African swine fever vaccine:
First, the first African swine fever virus strain in China was isolated. A viral cell isolation and culture system and an animal infection model were established, and the biological characteristics such as infectivity, pathogenicity and transmission capacity were studied in a relatively systematic way.
Second, candidate African swine fever vaccines were created, and laboratory-stage research proved that two of the candidate vaccine strains have good biosafety and immune protection effects.
Third, the two candidate vaccine strains have strong genetic stability in vitro and in vivo. When the two candidate vaccine strains were continuously passaged in primary cells in vitro, their biological characteristics and genome sequences showed no obvious changes, and when continuously passaged in pigs in vivo, no obvious phenomenon of virulence reversion was found either.
Fourth, the minimum protective inoculation dose was clarified, proving that high-dose and repeated-dose inoculation are safe.
Fifth, the research on the pre-clinical pilot product process was initially completed, production seed banks for the two candidate vaccines were established, the purity and exogenous virus testing of the vaccine production seed batches was initially completed, and the cell culture and freeze-drying process of the candidate vaccines was initially optimized.
This virus can be confirmed from the blood, tissue fluid, internal organs and other excreta of infected pigs. The virus in blood stored in a dark room at low temperature can survive for six years, and can live for several weeks at room temperature. Heating virus-infected blood at 55°C for 30 minutes or at 60°C for 10 minutes will destroy the virus, and many lipid solvents and disinfectants can destroy it as well.