Cross-sector collaboration is more effective than single sector actions at mitigating SARS-CoV-2 in white-tailed deer

Abstract

One Health helps achieve optimal health outcomes for people, animals, plants, and their shared environments. We describe a multidisciplinary effort to better understand and mitigate SARS-CoV-2 spread in white-tailed deer across One Health sectors. We first framed the risk problem with three governance sectors that manage captive and wild deer and human public health. The framing included the objectives for each sector, interactions that facilitate human-to-deer and deer-to-deer transmission, and alternatives intended to reduce risk. We then developed a dynamic compartmental model that linked wild and captive deer herds and humans and simulated SARS-CoV-2 dynamics. For baseline conditions, we estimated that median SARS-CoV-2 prevalence in wild and captive herds varied between 0.03-0.07, incidence between 0.68-1.46, and probability of persistence between 0.64-0.97 across 120-day simulations. We then tested single-sector alternatives alone and in combination with other sector actions. We found that single sector alternatives varied in their ability to reduce transmission and that the best performing alternative required collaborative actions among wildlife management, agricultural management, and public health agencies.

Reframing wildlife disease management problems with decision analysis

“…This proximity and the common practice of raising deer in captive facilities present an ongoing risk of detrimental effects of SARS-CoV-2 on deer populations and the evolution of variants that could spill back to humans (Delahay et al, 2021;Montagutelli et al, 2022;Sharun et al, 2021). Recent papers have framed the management of SARS-CoV-2 in deer as a risk problem to be evaluated with decision analysis Cook et al, 2023). Framing SARS-CoV-2 management as a risk problem facilitates the application of decision analytical techniques to decompose the problem into more cognitively manageable components.…”