H1N1 virus-affected pigs in Taitung farm recovering: official

The infection was discovered among a herd of 160 pigs raised on the farm in Taitung County's Guanshan area after the animals came down with coughs, runny noses and diarrhea around the end of October.

Hsu Tien-lai, director general of the COA's Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, said that in the second round of specimen collection and sophisticated tests conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on Nov. 5, all the affected pigs were found to be free of the virus.

A third round of tests is scheduled to be conducted on Nov. 11, Hsu said, adding that if the affected pigs test negative, restrictions on their movement will be lifted.

Although some pigs raised on the farm are coughing, they are not necessarily affected by the H1N1 virus, since coughing could be caused by many factors, Hsu said.

Meanwhile, he reiterated that humans remain the most probable source of the infection because in Taiwan, the new flu strain had only existed in humans prior to now.

The CDC, nonetheless, is continuing its investigation in an attempt to determine the source of the pigs'infection, Hsu noted.

As the animals were bred and raised on the farm and had never left it since being born, it sparked immediate speculation in late October that the H1N1 virus might have been passed from an infected worker on the farm to a pig before spreading through the herd.

The county's Public Health Bureau announced in early November, however, that the farm's six workers had all tested negative for the virus.

Based on the results of the tests, the bureau's director-general Lu Chiao-yang said the virus could have been transmitted to the animals by other agents, including birds.

But Hsu disagreed at that time, arguing that just because the workers tested negative for the virus did not mean they had never been infected.

CDC Deputy Director-General Chou Jih-haw had also said recently that a “human-to-pig” transmission is the most probable scenario in this case, although the transmission might not have been through direct contact.

The pigs could have been infected by eating food that was contaminated with the secretion of an infected patient, Chou said.

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