No further spread of foot-and-mouth disease in Yecheon as emergency vaccinations completed

The foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in Yecheon, North Gyeongsang Province, has been contained with no further spread reported since emergency quarantine measures were put in place.

The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs said Tuesday that no additional suspected cases have been identified since the outbreak was first confirmed in Yecheon on July 3, following emergency vaccinations, surveillance and disinfection measures.

After confirming the disease at one pig farm and five cattle farms in Yecheon, the ministry imposed movement restrictions on the affected farms and all farms within a 3-kilometer radius. Only 38 animals that tested positive on precision inspections — 24 cattle and 14 pigs — were culled.

The ministry also raised the crisis alert level to "Serious" for six adjacent cities and counties — Andong, Uiseong, Sangju, Mungyeong and Yeongju in North Gyeongsang Province, and Danyang in North Chungcheong Province — and deployed 69 disinfection vehicles to intensively sanitize areas around livestock farms. A two-week nationwide cleaning and disinfection campaign targeting all cloven-hoofed animal farms is also underway.

Serotype analysis confirmed the outbreak involves Type O, the strain covered by the routine domestic vaccine. Emergency vaccinations and clinical inspections have been completed at 8,122 cloven-hoofed animal farms in Yecheon and the six adjacent cities and counties, covering approximately 852,000 animals.

Quarantine authorities have stepped up surveillance, conducting clinical inspections twice a week at the 125 outbreak farms and once a week at 2,011 farms within the 3-kilometer radius or epidemiologically linked to the cases. The third round of clinical inspections, completed Friday, found no additional abnormalities. Weekly telephone surveillance of approximately 97,000 cloven-hoofed animal farms nationwide also turned up nothing unusual.

Starting Saturday — 21 days after the last burial at the outbreak farms — the ministry plans to conduct precision inspections at the affected farms and those within the 3-kilometer radius, and will lift movement restrictions once all results come back negative.

Lee Dong-sik, director general of the ministry's Animal Quarantine Policy Bureau, said no additional warning signs have been detected so far. "Livestock farmers should adhere to their vaccination schedules and strictly follow disinfection protocols inside and outside their farms, as well as biosecurity rules when entering and exiting," he said.