African Swine Fever

African swine fever (ASF) is a dangerous epizootic disease and, as such, notifiable in Austria. ASF is not present in Austria; in the event of a crisis, a diagnosis will be made at the AGES national reference laboratory.

The causative pathogen of African swine fever (ASF) is a virus belonging to the Asfarviridae family. While the virus poses no risk to humans, the disease is often fatal to pigs and wild boar, depending on the virulence of the pathogen. The African swine fever virus (ASFV) is a DNA virus and the only virus belonging to the Asfarviridae family, genus Asfivirus. The ASF virus is a double-stranded enveloped virus (ds DNA) and contains approximately 170,000 to 192,000 nucleic acid bases. Currently there is only one serotype, but several different genotypes have been identified based on the viral p72-gene22.