After the first month of vaccination against bird flu, from March 3 to April 2, 2,757,689 birds were vaccinated on 51 farms, reported on Thursday, April 6, the Phyto and Zoosanitary Regulation and Control Agency (Agrocalidad).

The newspaper EL UNIVERSO requested detailed information from the Agency, after last Wednesday the Minister of Agriculture and Livestock, Eduardo Izaguirre, indicated that more than 1.5 million birds had been vaccinated and that it would reach 2 million.

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Agrocalidad also stated that the province where the most farms and birds have been vaccinated so far is Tungurahua, with intervention on 23 farms and a total of 1,328,611 birds. Other provinces where the virus broke out were Cotopaxi, Bolívar, Pichincha and Azuay.

In addition, from March 31 to this Sunday, April 9, six farms are in the vaccination process, and eleven more farms are currently being assessed for entry into this process, the Agency reported.

In the meantime, Izaguirre also indicated: “There are already eight million vaccines in the country, we are waiting for them to continue to arrive, because the idea is to have that vaccination already open so that everyone can be vaccinated and thus have an even greater barrier.”

Regarding vaccines, Agrocalidad revealed that they have approved the import of 12 million doses of vaccines from the German commercial company Boehringer, of which the first 6 million will arrive in the country in the week from April 11 to 14.

These were added to the first 4 million doses that arrived last February imported by the company Macuna-Avimex, a commercial alliance between the company from Ecuador and Mexico.

Regarding the vaccination process, Agrocalidad clarified that it is continuous and is not determined by vaccination stages.

“The Agency’s goal is to provide immunity to birds located in focal and perifocal zones and risk zones that have been determined due to their type of production or geographic location,” said the entity, which stated that the minimum doses required to provide adequate Immunity for birds are two doses, therefore, in vaccinated farms, the revaccination process should be continued.

Two new epidemics in the Amazon region

Meanwhile, Minister Izaguirre revealed that after the start of the vaccination process, new epidemics of the virus were discovered, this time in the Amazon region, in addition to those that had already been discovered in the provinces of Cotopaxi (9 epidemics), Tungurahua (7), Bolívar (2), Pichincha (1) and Azuay (1).

According to Agrocalidad, these new outbreaks were discovered in the provinces of Pastaza and Napo in backyards.

Before that, in the first five affected provinces, about 1,200,000 birds were slaughtered, representing 8% of the laying birds in the whole country, which affected the supply of table eggs, which increased their price to 28% since March.

Slaughter of 8% of the laying population due to bird flu affects up to 28% more on the price of eggs

What are homesteads? The minister explained it: “These are the chickens that a small farmer has behind his house,” explained Izaguirre, who assured that the rate of appearance of new chicks has decreased.

“I think that a very important job was done in containment (…), I think it was done successfully, nothing is perfect, we have an army of people, there may be mistakes, but I believe that containment was done effectively and we are already vaccinating,” said the minister Izaguirre.

In the meantime, despite the results presented by the minister and Agrocalidad, the egg production sector is demanding detailed and permanent information about the vaccination process.

Marisol Molina, executive director of the Egg Producers’ Union (Uniproh), announced this Thursday, April 6, that they are asking Agrokalidad for a meeting in order to be informed about the progress.

“They have not issued permanent official information. We need to know which sectors have vaccinated, how many birds and other details,” said Molina.

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Meanwhile, Agrocalidad posted on its Twitter account information about the meetings they held with representatives of the Puéllaro (Pichincha) Poultry Breeders Association, on April 4; and the Association of Poultry Breeders Cotaló (Asavico), from Tungurahu, on April 6 this year, with whom they checked the progress of the vaccination process and the implementation of biosecurity measures on poultry farms.

Regarding the farms affected by the virus, Agrocalidad explained that they have already followed the measures of cleaning, disinfection and sanitary vacuum, and that they are currently in the process of sentinelization, in order to detect the circulation of the virus in the farms and thus guarantee the resettlement of the birds without new infections due to the presence of viruses in those places.