According to Reuters, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China issued regulations on August 28th requiring standardization in the production and use of test kits to diagnose African swine fever (ASF). Effective January 1st 2021 all test kits used by provincial regulators must be approved by the China Animal Disease Control Center. Presumably this includes PCR analytical systems and field deployable lateral flow immunoassay antigen detection kits.
The late August announcement mandating standardized AFS test kits is a remarkable acknowledgement of the lack of planning and coordination in the face of a catastrophic disease in progress since late 2018.
The need to rapidly diagnose infection other than by counting dead hogs is self-evident. Depletion of herds, quarantine and relevant control measures are required to control a disease for which no effective vaccine is currently available.