Utility of examining fallen stock data to monitor health‐related events in equids: Application to an outbreak of West Nile Virus in France in 2015

Few studies about the use of quantitative equine mortality data for monitoring purposes are available. Our study evaluated the utility of monitoring emerging equine diseases using mortality data collected by rendering plants. We used approaches involving modelling of historical mortality fluctuations and detection algorithm methods to analyse changes in equine mortality in connection with the West Nile Virus (WNV) outbreak that occurred between July and September 2015 along the Mediterranean coast of France. Two weeks after the first equine WNV case was detected by clinical surveillance, detection algorithms identified excess mortality. The temporal distribution of this excess mortality suggested that it was related to the WNV outbreak, which may helped to assess the impact of the WNV epizootic on equine mortality. The results suggest that real‐time follow‐up of mortality could be a useful tool for equine health surveillance.