Sheep with bluetongue often lie down because standing is painful.
The current bluetongue virus is of serotype 3. Piet van Rijn announced this during the GD webinar. Van Rijn is a researcher at Wageningen Bioveterinary Research. Unfortunately, there are no vaccinations available against this type of virus (yet). 13 companies have now been infected.
The spread of the virus is largely around Utrecht – the NVWA keeps an overview of the bluetongue infections in the Netherlands.
Reinard Everts from Schapendokter.nl responds in his blog on the announcement of the serotype “Although much is still unknown, we know that the distribution is mainly around Utrecht, but it has now also been confirmed in the Veluwe. The sheep there show the classic symptoms that we have seen before in the Netherlands, high fever, swollen mouth, salivation and painful walking. The type 3 was previously only seen in Southern Europe on the Italian islands. There is currently no vaccination available that works directly against this strain, so to our great regret this is not an option at this time. This means that the measures that sheep farmers can now take are very limited.”
Webinar about bluetongue
The GD, together with Wageningen Bioveterinary Research, held a very extensive webinar about the outbreak, the current status and they also provide answers to various questions: Watch the GD webinar here.
The GD has also created a fact sheet about recognizing bluetongue and the action you can take:
Read more about bluetongue here:
Appendix
Fact-sheet-bluetongue-Royal-GD-version-8-september_230908_213212 (605 KB)
2023-09-08 17:23:00
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