RIA Novosti reports that authorities in south Russia's Stavropol Region now plan to cull 7,000 pigs to prevent the spread of ASF, first detected two weeks ago, a regional governor's spokesperson said today (27 October).

Some 2,500 pigs have been already culled in the village of Gorkaya Balka, where the fatal virus was first reported on October 15. Some 117 pigs died and later tests confirmed the deaths were caused by the African swine fever virus.

A state of emergency has been declared in the area, where two new outbreaks were reported at private farms earlier on Monday. The area has been quarantined, and the transport of livestock, poultry and agricultural products has been banned.

The economic cost of the outbreaks is estimated at around 100 million rubles ($3.7 million).

Outbreaks of the highly contagious virus, which was first registered in 1903 in South Africa, are rare outside the region, but 5,000 pigs were culled or died from the virus in the summer in Russia's North Caucasus republic of North Ossetia.