Panic in Spain as virus outbreak declared a national emergency

A virus outbreak has sparked a national emergency in Spain (Image: Getty)

Spanish officials have been forced to declare a national emergency after 13 cases of swine flu were detected, posing a threat to the country's valuable pork exports. The disease, which causes fatal internal bleeding in animals, has been confirmed in wild boar in Spain during the latest flu season, sparking fears that it will spread to other animals.

Experts have been deployed to 39 pig farms in a 12-mile area around the initial Catalonia outbreak zone, with a high-security lab that has been undergoing maintenance, the Centre for Research in Animal Health (CReSA) in the Bellaterra area of Barcelona province, reportedly being blamed.

While authorities have yet to detect a trace of the disease in any other animals, El País newspaper reported that in late November, a wild boar died of the disease just a few hundred metres away from the centre where the virus is being studied. The Spanish newspaper contacted the CReSA to ask whether construction could weaken security protocols, but did not receive a response.

A theory is that the swine flu arrived via contaminated foreign food discarded in the trash and consumed by wild boars (Image: Getty)

Salvador Illa, Catalonia’s regional president, said on Saturday (December 6) that he had ordered the autonomous community's agrifood research institute to conduct an audit of the unnamed facilities.

He said: "The regional government isn’t ruling out any possibilities when it comes to the origin of the outbreak of African swine fever, but neither is it confirming any. All hypotheses remain open. First and foremost, we need to know what happened.”

It has not been determined how swine fever arrived in the Barcelona area. However, one scenario proposed by the Ministry of Agriculture is that it arrived via contaminated foreign food discarded in the trash and consumed by wild boars.

Genetic analysis has shown that the swine fever strain is different to those currently recorded in other European countries. It is more akin to one recorded in Georgia in 2007. CreSA scientists are collaborating with similar strains provided by the UK’s Pirbright Institute.

A swine flu pandemic in 2009 killed at least 150,000 people worldwide - many being younger people (Image: Getty)

A spokesperson from Spain's agriculture ministry said: "The discovery of a virus similar to the one that circulated in Georgia does not, therefore, rule out the possibility that its origin lies in a biological containment facility."

Spanish authorities have acted with urgency in an effort to protect the country's valuable pork exports, which generate €8.8 billion (£7.7 billion) annually.

Swine flu (H1N1) is a type of viral infection that affects the respiratory system. The virus has no known vaccine or cure. In 2009, a pandemic infected millions of people worldwide, first detected in the US. At least 150,000 people worldwide died, with 80% of those below the age of 65, as they had no immunity to the new strain of H1N1, unlike older people. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the pandemic to be over in August 2010. 

However, people can still get and spread H1N1. It is one of the seasonal flu viruses and can cause illness, hospitalisation and death. In 2012, a six-year-old girl who was infected with swine flu died in what doctors described as "one in a million" event. Chloe Buckley of West Drayton died at St Mary's Hospital in Paddington in July, 48 hours after complaining of a sore throat. A post-mortem showed she died of septic shock as a result of a tonsillitis infection. However, the pathologist could not rule out swine flu as a contributing factor.