Airborne Coronaviruses: Observations from Veterinary Experience

Abstract

The virus responsible for the pandemic that has affected 152 countries worldwide is a new strain of coronavirus (CoV), which belongs to a family of viruses widespread in many animal species, including birds, and mammals including humans. Indeed, CoVs are known in veterinary medicine affecting several species, and causing respiratory and/or enteric, systemic diseases and reproductive disease in poultry. Animal diseases caused by CoV may be considered from the following different perspectives: livestock and poultry CoVs cause mainly “population disease”; while in companion animals they are a source of mainly “individual/single subject disease”. Therefore, respiratory CoV diseases in high-density, large populations of livestock or poultry may be a suitable example for the current SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic. In this review we describe some strategies applied in veterinary medicine to control CoV and discuss if they may help to develop practical and useful strategies to control the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic.

Modeling the impact of optimized airflow and sick pen management on the spread of infectious diseases in swine barns

“…Although mathematical models have been used to estimate the epidemiological consequences of swine disease introduction, existing models do not often account for within-barn dissemination pathways, such as the airborne transmission (Pozzi et al, 2021;Sørensen et al, 2020;Ssematimba et al, 2022;Tuominen et al, 2022Tuominen et al, , 2023. The speed in which pathogens propagate within swine farms depends on multiple factors, including within-herd disease prevalence, pathogen's virulence (Machado et al, 2022;Malladi et al, 2022), and population factors such as farm size, production types, barn sizes, and barn ventilation systems (Busch et al, 2021;Machado et al, 2022;Mighell & Ward, 2021).…”

Current Research on Infectious Diseases of Domestic Animals from a One Health Perspective

“…Therefore, studies focusing on this topic from an animal perspective were included. The first paper by Pozzi et al [ 1 ] showed that the experiences amassed during the long-lasting war against Coronaviruses in animal medicine provide some useful information that may be applicable to COVID-19, such as the control of air inlets in healthcare facilities. Another paper by Soltane et al [ 2 ] investigated the potential application of structural analogues prepared from natural maslinic and oleanolic acids against the SARS-CoV-2 main protease as a tool for developing new therapeutical approaches, with interesting results.…”