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Foot-and-mouth disease outbreak reported from flooded settlement in Far East

A team of specialists led by the head of the Moscow-based murrain diagnostic laboratory, Alexei Mishchenko, was seconded to the Amur region on Sunday
Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS
Photo EPA/ITAR-TASS

BLAGOVESHCHENSK, August 11 (Itar-Tass) - An outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has been registered in the settlement of Ust-Ivanovka in Russia’s Far Eastern Amur region, which has been flooded after heavy rains.

Russia’s Federal Veterinary and Phytosanitary Control Service said on its official website on Sunday that samples taken from dead cows from Ust-Ivanovka, Blagoveshchensk district, had proved to contain type A murrain virus antigen.

According to the local administration, up to 500 cows might have caught the disease. Two big farms are located in Ust-Ivanovka, which borders China, from where a murrain outbreak has been recently reported. In all, five settlement have been flooded in the Amur region’s Blagoveshchensk district.

A team of specialists led by the head of the Moscow-based murrain diagnostic laboratory, Alexei Mishchenko, was seconded to the Amur region on Sunday.

In early July, an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease was reported from the village of Grodekovo of the Blagoveshchensk district. The Amur region health ministry said that that the virus had reached Russia’s territory from flooded pastures in China. Quarantine in Grodekovo was lifted ob July 25.