Police search research facility in Catalonia in probe into African swine fever outbreak

Police are carrying out a search this Thursday morning at the IRTA-CReSA laboratory, located in Bellaterra (Vallès Occidental), as part of the investigation into the origin of the outbreak of African swine fever (ASF).

The operation, involving Catalonia's Mossos d'Esquadra and Spain's Guardia Civil, was ordered by an investigating court in Cerdanyola del Vallès. The case is at a preliminary stage and subject to judicial secrecy.

Police said the search was being carried out "in accordance with the protocols and safety measures required for this type of research centre."

The IRTA-CReSA laboratory is based on the campus of the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), around 20km from Barcelona city centre. Its headquarters are less than a kilometre from where the first infected wild boars were found dead.

Virus sequencing 

On Monday, the IRTA-CReSA laboratory, where there are suspicions of a possible lab leak, sent the virus sequencing it had been working on to a European reference laboratory to compare it with the strain found in the infected wild boars.

The same EU laboratory recently determined that the virus genome detected in the wild boars does not match the strains currently circulating in Europe, but instead closely resembles one linked to an outbreak in Georgia in 2007.

26 cases

On Tuesday, Spain's Ministry of Agriculture confirmed 10 additional wild boar deaths from African swine fever (ASF) within the perimeter of the first outbreak detected near Cerdanyola del Vallès, close to Barcelona.

The latest cases bring the total number of infected wild animals to 26 since the outbreak began, the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

More than 200 animal carcasses found in the affected area – in natural settings and on roads and railway lines – have returned negative results for the virus.

African swine fever is a contagious viral disease that affects pigs and wild boar but poses no risk to human health. So far, authorities have successfully prevented the virus from reaching pig farms.