This brings to six the number of cases of swine fever confirmed in wild boars in Germany in the last week, according to reporting from Reuters. The disease was found in dead wild boars, not farmed animals, close to the location of the first confirmed case of ASF last week, the Brandenburg state health ministry said.

Germany’s Friedrich-Loeffler scientific institute had confirmed the animals had ASF following positive initial tests in Brandenburg state laboratories, the federal ministry said.

China and a series of other pork buyers have since banned imports of German pork since the first case was confirmed. The disease is not dangerous to humans however it is fatal to pigs, and a massive outbreak in China has led to hundreds of millions of pigs being culled.

ASF had repeatedly been confirmed in wild boars in Poland close to the German border in past months. There have been about 3,100 cases in wild boar in Poland so far in 2020, the Friedrich-Loeffler institute said on its website. Germany's federal agriculture ministry said in a separate statement it had to be expected that the highly infectious disease would have been transmitted to other wild boars following the discovery of the first dead animal.

The Brandenburg authorities are intensifying protection measures around the area where ASF was discovered to prevent it spreading.

"In addition, the ministry is in intensive talks with the relevant third countries to enable a regionalization concept for trade with pork to these countries," the federal ministry said.

Regionalisation means pork imports are only banned from the region inside the supplier country, with unaffected areas in the country continuing exports. Germany's pork exports to the EU continue, the federal ministry added.