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 The highly contagious disease, which is incurable in pigs but
harmless to humans, has spread rapidly across neighboring China
since August, and has been found in seven areas in Vietnam, the
state-run Vietnam News Service reported.
"We should combat the epidemic as if we are fighting against the
enemy," Phuc said in a meeting with regional officials on Monday,
according to Tuesday's report, which said Phuc had called for
"drastic measures" from the "whole political system" to fight the
disease.
From Feb. 1 to March 3, the fever was found in 202 households in
seven cities or provinces in northern Vietnam, including in the
capital, Hanoi, Vietnam's government website reported.
Over 4,300 pigs have been infected and destroyed because of the
virus, the website said, citing data from the Ministry of
Agriculture and Rural Development.
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Vietnam produced 3.82 million tonnes of pork in 2018, equivalent to
72 percent of the country's entire meat production, up 2.2 percent
from 2017, the report said.
The virus started to spread at some locations around Hanoi during
last week's summit between U.S. President Donald Trump, and North
Korean leader Kim Jong Un, after the first confirmed cases of the
disease in Vietnam were found in three farms in Thai Binh and Hung
Yen provinces.
Pork accounts for three-quarters of total meat consumption in
Vietnam, a country of 95 million people where most of its 30 million
farm-raised pigs are consumed domestically.
(Reporting by Mai Nguyen and James Pearson; Editing by Joseph
Radford)
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