While investigating a giraffe's death in a Vietnamese zoo, we successfully identified and isolated Lumpy skin disease virus (LSDV) from skin nodule biopsies and ruptured nodule wound swab samples. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that the isolate obtained in this study was closely related to the previous Vietnamese and Chinese LSDV strains from cattle. This is the first report on the genome detection and isolation of LSDV in a diseased giraffe in Vietnam. Further study is needed to better understand the epidemiology of this disease in wildlife.

No abstract

African swine fever (ASF) is a highly contagious disease that is caused by the ASF virus (ASFV) with a high fatality rate in domestic pigs resulting in a high socio-economic impact. The pig business in Vietnam was recently affected by ASF for the first time. This study thus aimed to develop a disease dynamic model to explain how ASFV spreads in Vietnamese pig populations and suggest a protective vaccine coverage level required to prevent future outbreaks. The outbreak data were collected from ten private small-scale farms within the first wave of ASF outbreaks in Vietnam. Three methods were used to estimate the basic reproduction number (R0), including the exponential growth method, maximum likelihood method, and attack rate method. The average R0 values were estimated at 1.49 (95%CI: 1.05–2.21), 1.58 (95%CI: 0.92–2.56), and 1.46 (95%CI: 1.38–1.57), respectively. Based on the worst-case scenario, all pigs in a herd would be infected and removed within 50 days. We suggest vaccinating at least 80% of pigs on each farm once a commercially approved ASF vaccine is available. However, an improvement in biosecurity levels in small-scale farms is still greatly encouraged to prevent the introduction of the virus.