African swine fever - current disease situation in the EU

African swine fever is a viral hemorrhagic disease in feral and domestic pigs with extremely high lethality. In the last decade, it has appeared in several European and Asian countries and currently has an unprecedented scale. The aim of the bachelor thesis was to evaluate the disease situation of African swine fever in the European Union for the period 2016-2020, based on the number of reported cases in the Animal Disease Notification System. During the period under review, a total of 43,634 cases of the disease were reported in the European Union, of which the vast majority (88%) in feral pigs. The countries with the highest number of reported cases were Poland (10,180), the Baltic States (9,182) and Hungary (5,799). By contrast, very low numbers were found in Greece (1) and Moldova (32). The first case of the disease in the Czech Republic was reported in 2017 in feral pigs. Our territory has been officially free of African swine fever since 2019. Although the Czech Republic has been very successful in eradicating African swine fever, the risk of re-introduction of the disease into our territory persists, due to the unfavorable disease situation in neighboring countries, especially Poland and Germany. The only way to prevent further growth of African swine fever outbreaks is to apply strict biosecurity rules in all categories of domestic pig farming, reducing the stocking density of feral pigs in the most risky areas by ordering intensive hunting, and ensuring active monitoring of the disease by sampling each wild boar to be caught