The Netherlands is currently experiencing an outbreak of the virus, with the official name BTV-3: the disease has been circulating here since September last year. A ‘new’ virus variant (BTV-12) was detected in a sheep on a farm in Utrecht province. The animal had been vaccinated several times, but still showed symptoms indicating bluetongue.
Further investigation later showed that it was BTV-12 contamination, which had previously been found outside Europe. Last week it was confirmed that it was a ‘new’ variant, but samples had to be additionally examined at a laboratory in Madrid for confirmation. On Friday, Minister Femke Wiersma (Agriculture) informed the House.
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Maartje Geels is a news reporter de Volkskrant.
NVWA supervisors have now inspected the company in Kockengen, where dozens of other sheep and lambs are kept. The specific variant is not found in other animals. It is not clear how the sheep became infected. On Friday morning, an ‘animal diseases expert group’ meets at the minister’s request: experts are called in in case of an outbreak of infectious animal diseases.
Other infections
After the virus was discovered in the sheep, blood samples previously taken from animals in the area were examined. The research revealed infections in two cows at a company in Harmelen, about five kilometers away from the infected sheep. The cow and her calf both carried the variant – other cows in the company were not infected.
In his letter to the DPR, Wiersma wrote that the infection in the Netherlands was a ‘surprise’. Specific virus variants were previously found in Israel and countries in southern Africa, America, parts of Asia and Australia.
Wiersma warned that although ‘only’ three cases had been identified, the true extent of the outbreak was still unclear. That’s why 1,400 sheep and cattle blood samples collected across the Netherlands since September should be examined in the near future.
Ministers expect the first results of further investigations next week. Meanwhile, he urged animal keepers to be extra vigilant about bluetongue disease, ‘especially when vaccinated animals show symptoms’.
Plague
The number of bluetongue infections has increased sharply in recent months, but the percentage of sheep dying from the disease has decreased. Vaccination seems to be the main explanation for this. However, there is not (yet) a vaccine in the EU against the variant that Wiersma reported on Friday.
Bluetongue is spread by midges, small stinging flies. There is an obligation to report the virus, but a transport ban is not an option. According to Wiersma, this was not necessary as outbreaks between 2006 and 2008 showed that such measures were ‘almost ineffective’.
“I fully understand that this raises questions and concerns. “The sheep sector and the cattle sector were particularly hard hit by the BTV-3 outbreak last year,” Wiersma concluded in his letter to Parliament. He has now asked experts for more information about the ‘new’ serotype.
