Rome bans picnics in bid to halt scavenging wild boar

Picnics have been banned and bins fenced off in a large swathe of northern Rome as health authorities move to contain the wild boar population after African swine fever was detected in a deceased animal.

Feeding or approaching the animals has also been forbidden, while people who have walked through farmland or nature reserves in the affected areas have been told to disinfect their shoes.

African swine fever, which is fatal to pigs and wild boar but harmless to humans, was detected in the body of a dead boar in a nature reserve last week.