The enigma of the African swine fever outbreak in Barcelona: the committee of specialists doesn’t discover the origin of the virus | Science | EUROtoday

The preliminary report on the looks of African swine fever in Spain maintains that “it is premature to pronounce with certainty on the origin of the outbreak”, 75 days after the detection of two contaminated wild boars a whole bunch of meters from the Animal Health Research Center (CReSA), in Bellaterra (Barcelona), after greater than three many years with none case in Spain.

Scientists from this laboratory of the Generalitat of Catalonia carried out an experiment, between October and November, with the purpose of testing a vaccine prototype in 15 pigs, with an intramuscular injection of the attenuated virus, genetically modified from the pressure that started the present epidemic in a number of European nations in Georgia. On November 6, torrential rains induced flooding, street closures and blackouts within the province of Barcelona. After the storm, “a relevant incident” was recorded within the CReSA corpse digester, as later outlined by the European Union Veterinary Emergency Team.

The digester is a key piece of kit in a excessive biosafety laboratory that converts the our bodies of contaminated animals into sterile waste, utilizing chemical substances and excessive temperatures. That day, the digester didn’t work, an issue severe sufficient for the European mission to contemplate that this incident was the origin of the outbreak. On November 25 and 26, the corpses of two contaminated wild boars have been discovered a whole bunch of meters from the laboratory. This newspaper requested CReSA on January 14 what precisely occurred to the corpse digester and what measures have been taken to stop a leak. A spokeswoman responded days later that it’s “private information.”

On December 5, the Ministry of Agriculture itself launched the speculation that the virus escaped from CReSA, and 5 days later it created a committee of specialists. Its preliminary report doesn’t attain any definitive conclusion concerning the origin of the disaster, however gives new knowledge that doesn’t match with a leak attributable to the incident within the corpse digester.

23 outbreaks

The doc exhibits a map with the situation of the 23 outbreaks detected up to now in wild boars. The heart of gravity of the infections, the so-called centroid, is the Generalitat laboratory. However, the report states that “CReSA experts have worked on the hypothesis that the earliest date of infection could be between a month and a half and four months prior to the sampling date.” That is, the laboratory specialists recommend that the oldest corpses of contaminated wild boars present in close by forests may very well be from October and even summer season. The EU Veterinary Emergency Team, after visiting CReSA in December, additionally thought-about it “highly unlikely” that the incident on the carcass digester was the reason for the leak, as some stays of contaminated wild boars appeared up to now from earlier than November.

Genetic analyzes additionally don’t level to the lab leak, in response to the report. The CReSA supplied “a detailed inventory of available biological samples” from the virus experiments. The European Union Veterinary Emergency Team chosen 81 samples, together with 69 from 4 experiments carried out in 2025, which have been analyzed on the Central Veterinary Laboratory, a middle depending on the Ministry of Agriculture situated within the Madrid city of Algete. “The screening results showed that none of the samples analyzed presented the specific genetic markers identified in the virus detected in the outbreak,” the report states. The attribute mutations noticed within the wild boar pathogen haven’t been discovered within the laboratory pig viruses analyzed.

The British virologist Edward Holmes was the scientist who advised the remainder of humanity {that a} new coronavirus was inflicting mysterious pneumonia within the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan. Holmes, from the University of Sydney (Australia), printed the whole genome of the covid virus on January 10, 2020. The researcher, who has labored with African swine fever in Europe, regrets the opacity within the investigation of the outbreak in Barcelona.

“The teams that have carried out the sequencing must publish all their African swine fever virus genome sequence data in the public domain as soon as possible, both from wild boars and from those strains used in CReSA,” Holmes urged in dialog with this newspaper on January 16. “With this information it should be possible to determine fairly quickly and easily whether this is a laboratory leak, considering its evolutionary relationship to all other virus sequences that are available. It is very unsatisfactory that this data has not yet been published,” lamented Holmes.

In addition to the evaluation carried out within the Central Veterinary Laboratory of Algete, a second evaluation of 21 samples has been carried out within the laboratory of Toni Gabaldón, from the Barcelona Biomedical Research Institute, a middle based by the Generalitat and the University of Barcelona. “None resembles that of the outbreak. The mystery about the origin remains,” says Gabaldón, head of the Comparative Genomics group. In his opinion, the viruses inside and out of doors the CReSA current extra variations than anticipated if it have been an evolution of some weeks from an escaped pathogen. The sequences, the DNA of the viruses analyzed, haven’t but been printed in order that different scientists can research them.

Edward Holmes highlights the difficulties. “At the moment, it is difficult to determine whether the outbreak in wild boars originated in a laboratory or not, although a leak should be considered a serious hypothesis. Calculations on how much evolution is expected to occur are very prone to error – since evolution is not a simple and linear process – and, therefore, are not really that useful,” he defined to EL PAÍS on January 16.

Holmes has defended that the Covid pandemic didn’t originate in a laboratory in Wuhan, however within the Huanan market, the place there have been cages with reside wild animals, comparable to raccoon canine, attainable hosts of the virus. A group of just about three dozen scientific advisors to the World Health Organization (WHO) introduced its report on the attainable origins of the coronavirus on June 27, 2025, with out reaching any definitive conclusion as a result of opacity of the Chinese authorities. “As things stand, we should not rule out any hypothesis, including the zoonotic jump.” [de animales a humanos] or the laboratory leak,” mentioned Ethiopian biologist Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director basic of the WHO.

Other situations

In addition to the potential of escape from the laboratory, the African swine fever knowledgeable committee is learning different situations: the unlikely arrival by wild boars from northern Italy (it has not been detected in France), the deliberate introduction (“incoherent”, in response to Spanish specialists) and the entry from a distant nation by means of contaminated meals (“widely documented in the epidemiology of the disease”).

The authorities have managed to comprise the circumstances of contaminated wild boars inside a six-kilometer radius of the origin of the outbreak, however the report warns that it’s “plausible” that the virus bypasses the roads that till now have prevented its motion. Experts urge “urgently completing a new fenced perimeter at a sufficient distance,” in search of to “install second barriers a few hundred meters beyond the first.” The committee proposes controlling the wild boar inhabitants with silent strategies comparable to “trapping and firearms fitted with silencers” utilized by rural brokers and even “volunteer hunters” skilled in biosecurity if needed.

The knowledgeable committee is made up of 9 specialists. Among them, Carmina Gallardo, coordinator of the African swine fever laboratory of the Animal Health Research Center, within the Madrid city of Valdeolmos; and the veterinarian Christian Gortázar, from the Hunting Resources Research Institute, in Ciudad Real. Somewhat over a month in the past, Gortázar advised this newspaper: “Whether the virus that is circulating has emerged in a laboratory or in the field… well, we will have to find out over time. Both things are possible. Ruling it out 100% is almost as difficult as confirming it 100%.”