DA expects FDA go-ahead for hog vaccines in April
The Department of Agriculture (DA) hopes to secure the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval by next month for the commercial rollout of African swine fever (ASF) vaccines from Vietnam in a bid to sustain the decline in active cases.
Agriculture Assistant Secretary Arnel de Mesa said in an interview on Wednesday that the vaccines “should have commercial approval from the FDA within April.”
Citing initial reports that the DA received on the government-controlled vaccination, de Mesa said the ASF vaccines from Vietnam are effective as most vaccinated pigs are healthy.
De Mesa, also the DA’s spokesperson, said 29,000 out of 160,000 available doses of ASF vaccines have been administered, including 10,000 doses acquired by the government via emergency procurement.
Less losses
The biggest part of the supply was administered to hogs located in Lobo and Lipa towns in Batangas as well as in Bulacan, Tarlac and Laguna.
De Mesa also said that among 29 farms that participated in the government’s vaccination drive, only 51 inoculated hogs died.
The DA initiated the drive in August last year, about five years after recording the first ASF outbreak in 2019 that resulted in billions of pesos in losses and substantial reduction of the local swine population.
Despite this, the number of communities with active ASF cases declined to 39 barangays in 13 provinces based on the Bureau of Animal Industry’s (BAI) tally as of March 14.
This was lower than active cases recorded in 66 barangays in 18 provinces as of Feb. 28.
The BAI’s latest report noted that most ASF cases are concentrated in Central Visayas, particularly Bohol. De Mesa said new cases have been recorded in Laguna, although pigs in the area have already been quarantined while ASF-positive pigs have been culled.
“The good thing here is that the numbers are very good, the number of active cases is going down. And then, these are very significant drops in the number of affected barangays,” he added.
Aside from the controlled vaccination of hogs, the DA has updated various policies to govern the movement of pigs and instituted strict border checkpoints as part of wider efforts to control the spread of ASF.
