Validation of the effectiveness of pig farm repopulation protocol following African swine fever outbreaks in the Philippines

Abstract

The African swine fever (ASF) epidemic has severely challenged the Philippines’ swine industry since 2019. The National African Swine Fever Prevention and Control Program (NASFPCP), launched in 2021, aims to provide guidance for managing ASF through surveillance, monitoring, and swine repopulation. This study evaluates the effectiveness of post-outbreak disinfection protocols and government-mandated measures for repopulation standard. Surveillance data from three repopulation phases—(I) depopulation, cleaning, and disinfection; (II) downtime (20 days); and (III) sentinel animals (40 days)—were collected from February 2020 to December 2021 in the province of Batangas. Time-to-detection of positive events were analyzed for different farm types, seasons, or location using survival analysis modeling. Probability of detecting infected farms at different sampling times was estimated in terms of sensitivity of the sampling time. Data from 145 swine farms, including 99 backyard and 46 commercial farms, revealed positive rates of 10.1 and 8.7%, respectively. The failure rate during repopulation surveillance was 9.66%, whereas 90.34% farms remained ASF negative. Sensitivity estimate increased from 18–21 to 89% by day 27, with sentinel animals on that day exhibiting the highest estimated sensitivity. This highlights the importance of sentinel pigs in the NASFPCP for effective ASF control in the Philippines. Survival analysis showed no statistically significant differences in the results between either farm type, season, or municipality level. Geographic mapping of surveyed farms and those with positive detections identified high-risk locations including San Juan and Lipa City as key areas of concern. Enhancing targeted surveillance is critical for improving an early ASF detection and national response in the Philippines.