1 week Ago By Ryan Fahey, Brigid Brown
The measles virus continues to spread in the US and Mexico and now Europe is grappling with a virus outbreak that is causing widespread panic and border shutdowns. Hungary is facing its first foot-and-mouth disease in over five decades, leading to mass culling of livestock and country-wide alarm amid concerns it could be the result of a "biological attack." The dire situation has prompted neighboring nations Austria and Slovakia to shut dozens of border crossings, based on data from the World Organization for Animal Health, reports the Mirror UK.
Hungarian officials have suspicions of foul play, speculating the disease spotted near the northwest border might have been "artificially engineered." Echoing the unsettling notion, Prime Minister Viktor Orban's chief aide Gergely Gulyas mentioned that the artificial origin of the virus cannot be dismissed, hinting at the possibility of an intentionally engineered pathogen, which he is basing on results provided to him by an overseas lab. But so far, he has stopped short of pointing any fingers as to who may behind the attack.
Almost 1,000 Hungarian farms have been put under the microscope by animal health authorities, uncovering four positive cases of the dreaded disease. Hungary, which represented just 1.2% of the EU's cattle stock last December, now finds itself in the challenging position of executing widespread culls in an effort to halt the disease's march.
Foot-and-mouth disease, while harmless to humans, wreaks havoc on livestock, from cattle to goats, causing fever and painful blisters in the mouth. Paul Meixner, a dual Austrian-Hungarian citizen and farm owner in Hungary, faced a staggering loss of 1.5 billion forint ($4.
09 million) after culling 3,000 animals. Reflecting on the heartbreaking experience, Meixner said: "Everyone was just standing there, crying and saying that this cannot be true, that this was impossible." Despite the devastation, he is determined to bounce back, declaring, "In two weeks, we will start harvesting and storing the hay.
We need the fodder for next year." The crisis also saw emergency measures with striking imagery of decontamination stations being hastily established at shut-down border crossings. Personnel in protective hazmat suits were observed inspecting the contents of trucks entering these areas, and cars were subjected to thorough spray-downs at makeshift decontamination stations to stem the spread of the virus.
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