Seoul [South Korea], May 19: South Korea has reported 11 foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) cases for the past 10 days, leading the authorities to raise its alert level to the highest, Yonhap news agency said Friday.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs was quoted as saying it had confirmed an additional FMD case at a beef cattle farm in Cheongju city, about 110 km south of the capital Seoul.
Since the first FMD outbreak here in four years on May 10, the number of such cases has increased to 11, including nine in the Cheongju city and two in Jeungpyeong county, adjacent to the city.
The authorities sent officials to the farm to take quarantine measures and conduct an epidemiological investigation, while all the cattle raised at the farm planned to be culled.
To prevent the spread of the highly transmissible viral disease, the agriculture ministry heightened its FMD warning level by two notches to "serious," or the highest of its four-tier system, in nine cities and counties including Cheongju and Jeungpyeong.
Source: Xinhua