Pig farm worker tests positive for Ebola virus

MANILA, Philippines - Philippine health officials said yesterday that a pig farm worker had become the sixth person to test positive for antibodies to the non-lethal Ebola-Reston virus.

“Samples taken from a slaughterhouse worker in the northern Philippines showed signs of antibodies for Ebola-Reston, indicating he may have been infected with the virus in the past,” a health department statement said.

The slaughterhouse worker, who has not been identified, had no direct contact with the sick pigs, the department said.

The announcement came almost a month after four pig farm workers and a butcher tested positive for the antibodies.

Scientists are still trying to determine if the six caught the virus from pigs. If such a link were proved, it would be the first time humans have contracted the disease from pigs.

The government earlier imposed a quarantine on two pig farms in Bulacan and Pangasinan provinces after samples showed pigs were carrying the Ebola-Reston strain first found in monkeys exported from the Philippines to the US.

Samples from the farms showed that the virus was still spreading in Bulacan but not in Pangasinan, health officials said.

While recommending the lifting of the quarantine on the Pangasinan farm, the health department had ordered some 6,000 pigs in Bulacan to be culled.

The Ebola-Reston strain is not deadly to humans, unlike the other known Ebola strains found in Africa.

Health Sec. Francisco Duque III said that international experts fear that unless the spread of the Ebola-Reston virus in the country is curbed, there is a possibility that the virus could mutate into fatal subtypes.

In an interview before the Cabinet meeting, Duque said that despite studies, experts have remained baffled on the source of Ebola-Reston virus.

But he said one of the concerns of international experts who have come to the country to look into the Ebola subtype was the possibility that the virus could mutate into a fatal strain.

“Remember this belongs to the family of other fatal Ebola virus,” he said, stressing that so far, no illness has been observed in both pigs and humans.

The virus strain, first found in monkeys from Mindanao, is the fifth of five identified subtypes of Ebola virus. The other four, namely Ebola-Zaire, Ebola-Sudan, Ebola-Ivory Coast and Ebola-Bundibugyo, are known to be fatal and could be transmitted from non-human primates to humans.

Duque said while the source of Ebola-Reston has yet to be identified in Pandi, Bulacan, studies made by the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) conclusively showed 19 pigs in Pandi farm affected by the virus.

He stressed that to curb the spread of the virus, the Department of Health (DOH) and the Department of Agriculture (DA) have issued four point guidelines, namely: the immediate reporting of suspicious death of pigs to local government authorities; reporting and confiscation of “double dead” meat to prevent their entry into the market; proper handling of meat; and proper cooking of meat at temperatures ranging from 70 to 100 degrees Centigrade.

He said the quarantine in Pandi would remain, even as the DOH and DA is poised to spread its surveillance operations on Ebola-Reston to include the rest of Central Luzon, Southern Tagalog and Pangasinan in Region 2.

The DA earlier announced that some 6,000 pigs in the affected farm in Pandi would be slaughtered under World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) procedures. The carcasses would be burned and buried within the premises of the farm.