{"id":753565,"date":"2026-08-29T12:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-29T12:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/753565\/"},"modified":"2026-08-29T12:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-29T12:48:10","slug":"how-devon-and-cornwall-became-bluetongue-virus-hotspot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/753565\/","title":{"rendered":"How Devon and Cornwall became bluetongue virus hotspot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spread mainly by midge bites, the virus was confirmed in a sheep in Cornwall in September 2025<\/a> in the first recorded case in the UK in 17 years.<\/p>\n

This strain was introduced into Cornwall from midges blown in wind from northern France, said Gubbins.<\/p>\n

With cases clustered in the south of France this year, external<\/a>, Gubbins said the likely scenario was the virus “went from one season to the next” in parts of the UK.<\/p>\n

Bluetongue, which causes a drop in milk production in dairy cows and lameness in sheep, can be transmitted to their offspring.<\/p>\n

“The virus has essentially done that in the south-west of England, and then when the new crop of lambs and calves were born, it’s come during a very warm period – and that is very favourable for bluetongue transmission,” said Gubbins.<\/p>\n

“In normal weather conditions we’d expect that to be one to two weeks during the height of summer – but for the past few months it’s been a few days to a week.<\/p>\n

“It’s been much faster than we’d normally expect.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spread mainly by midge bites, the virus was confirmed in a sheep in Cornwall in September 2025 in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":753566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[59,102,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-753565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-gb","tag-health","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=753565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/753566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=753565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=753565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=753565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}