Simulation of Foot-and-Mouth Disease Spread and Effects of Mitigation Strategies to Support Veterinary Contingency Planning in Denmark

Abstract

To forge a path towards livestock disease emergency preparedness in Denmark, 15 different strategies to mitigate foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) were examined by modelling epidemics initiated in cattle, pig or small ruminant herds across various production systems located in four different Danish regions (Scenario 1), or in one specific livestock production system within each of the three species geographically distributed throughout Denmark (Scenario 2). When additional mitigation strategies were implemented on top of basic control strategies in the European foot-and-mouth disease spread model (EuFMDiS), no significant benefits were predicted in terms of the number of infected farms, the epidemic control duration, and the total economic cost. Further, the model results indicated that the choice of index herd, the resources for outbreak control, and the detection time of FMD significantly influenced the course of an epidemic. The present study results emphasise the importance of basic mitigation strategies, including an effective back-and-forward traceability system, adequate resources for outbreak response, and a high level of awareness among farmers and veterinarians concerning the detection and reporting of FMD at an early stage of an outbreak for FMD control in Denmark.

Estimating the time of infection for African swine fever in pig farms in Korea

“…An understanding of within-herd transmission dynamics is important for an effective response to an infectious animal disease and requires knowledge of when the infection started on the farm. Simulation models can be particularly helpful in such cases (17,18). If the herd size is small and the number of cases is low, then, the infection time can be estimated based on the number of days since the onset of the oldest appearing clinical symptoms or lesions, and the incubation period.…”

Review state-of-the-art of output-based methodological approaches for substantiating freedom from infection

“…Simulation models represent the presence or spread of diseases and their detection with a great flexibility in terms of the range and complexity of assumptions that can be included ( 1 , 2 ). As scenario trees, these models rely on stochastic simulations (i.e., model is run for a certain number of iterations) to evaluate ‘as if’ scenarios.…”

“…Many countries have regulations to control, eradicate, and sometimes prevent the introduction of infectious cattle diseases that are zoonotic or result in considerable economic losses, such as tuberculosis, bluetongue, foot and mouth disease, Salmonella Dublin (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8). Furthermore, there are other cattle infections, such as bovine viral diarrhoea (BVD) or infectious bovine rhinotracheitis/infectious pustular vulvovaginitis (IBR/IPV), where there may be no regulatory requirement for eradication (9)(10)(11)(12), that can cause substantial economic losses, due to suboptimal production and treatment costs, as well as decreased welfare in infected herds (13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19).…”