Police and soldiers are manning roadblocks in the Somerset East area of the Eastern Cape to enforce a quarantine following a suspected outbreak of avian influenza.
”We have quarantined 15 farms in the area and extended the quarantine area radius to 30km,” Mahlangu Segoati, national spokesperson for the Department of Agriculture, said on Thursday.
He said the movement of all poultry products, as well as humans, is being monitored as part of the precautionary measures put in place since the avian flu was detected.
Segoati said test results determining the nature of the virus are expected by the end of the week. A particular strain of the avian flu virus can be transmitted to humans and cause death.
Segoati said the department is also trying to trace the origins of the outbreak, which originally affected three farms in the Somerset East region. The two farms currently affected are Endo and Glentana.
Officials are expected to visit all 15 farms to carry out inspections on affected animals. The flue has decimated about 1 500 ostriches.
Meanwhile, the Eastern Cape health and agriculture department said 20 to 200 ostriches have died per day since the flu was first diagnosed on July 25.
Eastern Cape health minister Bevan Goqwana said all energies will be channelled into protecting the public first and preventing the spread of the disease.
He assured the public that the situation is ”under control and strictly confined to birds”.
The Western Cape department of agriculture has requested its Eastern Cape counterpart not to send birds for slaughtering to the Western Cape until there is more clarity on the infection.
”The disease could pose a serious threat to the export of ostrich meat from the ostrich exports abattoirs in the Western Cape,” provincial agriculture minister Cobus Dowry said.
The European Union could ”immediately revoke” the Western Cape’s export status should the disease spread.
Dowry confirmed that a ban has been put in place on the movement of ostriches from the Eastern Cape to the Western Cape, with the situation to be reconsidered once a clearer picture emerges. — Sapa