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Multilevel model for airborne transmission of foot-and-mouth disease applied to Swedish livestock

The foot-and-mouth disease is an ever-present hazard to the livestock industry due to the huge economic consequences following an outbreak that necessitates culling of possibly infected animals in vast numbers. The disease is highly contagious and previous epizootics have shown that it spreads by ma...

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Autores principales: Björnham, Oscar, Sigg, Robert, Burman, Jan
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7250458/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32453749
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232489
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author Björnham, Oscar
Sigg, Robert
Burman, Jan
author_facet Björnham, Oscar
Sigg, Robert
Burman, Jan
author_sort Björnham, Oscar
collection PubMed
description The foot-and-mouth disease is an ever-present hazard to the livestock industry due to the huge economic consequences following an outbreak that necessitates culling of possibly infected animals in vast numbers. The disease is highly contagious and previous epizootics have shown that it spreads by many routes. One such route is airborne transmission, which has been investigated in this study by means of a detailed multilevel model that includes all scales of an outbreak. Local spread within an infected farm is described by a stochastic compartment model while the spread between farms is quantified by atmospheric dispersion simulations using a network representation of the set of farms. The model was applied to the Swedish livestock industry and the risk for an epizootic outbreak in Sweden was estimated using the basic reproduction number of each individual livestock-holding farm as the endpoint metric. The study was based on comprehensive official data sets for both the current livestock holdings and regional meteorological conditions. Three species of farm animals are susceptible to the disease and are present in large numbers: cattle, pigs and sheep. These species are all included in this study using their individual responses and consequences to the disease. It was concluded that some parts of southern Sweden are indeed preconditioned to harbor an airborne epizootic, while the sparse farm population of the north renders such events unlikely to occur there. The distribution of the basic reproduction number spans over several orders of magnitudes with low risk of disease spread from the majority of the farms while some farms may act as very strong disease transmitters. The results may serve as basic data in the planning of the national preparedness for this type of events.
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spelling pubmed-72504582020-06-08 Multilevel model for airborne transmission of foot-and-mouth disease applied to Swedish livestock Björnham, Oscar Sigg, Robert Burman, Jan PLoS One Research Article The foot-and-mouth disease is an ever-present hazard to the livestock industry due to the huge economic consequences following an outbreak that necessitates culling of possibly infected animals in vast numbers. The disease is highly contagious and previous epizootics have shown that it spreads by many routes. One such route is airborne transmission, which has been investigated in this study by means of a detailed multilevel model that includes all scales of an outbreak. Local spread within an infected farm is described by a stochastic compartment model while the spread between farms is quantified by atmospheric dispersion simulations using a network representation of the set of farms. The model was applied to the Swedish livestock industry and the risk for an epizootic outbreak in Sweden was estimated using the basic reproduction number of each individual livestock-holding farm as the endpoint metric. The study was based on comprehensive official data sets for both the current livestock holdings and regional meteorological conditions. Three species of farm animals are susceptible to the disease and are present in large numbers: cattle, pigs and sheep. These species are all included in this study using their individual responses and consequences to the disease. It was concluded that some parts of southern Sweden are indeed preconditioned to harbor an airborne epizootic, while the sparse farm population of the north renders such events unlikely to occur there. The distribution of the basic reproduction number spans over several orders of magnitudes with low risk of disease spread from the majority of the farms while some farms may act as very strong disease transmitters. The results may serve as basic data in the planning of the national preparedness for this type of events. Public Library of Science 2020-05-26 /pmc/articles/PMC7250458/ /pubmed/32453749 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232489 Text en © 2020 Björnham et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Björnham, Oscar
Sigg, Robert
Burman, Jan
Multilevel model for airborne transmission of foot-and-mouth disease applied to Swedish livestock
title Multilevel model for airborne transmission of foot-and-mouth disease applied to Swedish livestock
title_full Multilevel model for airborne transmission of foot-and-mouth disease applied to Swedish livestock
title_fullStr Multilevel model for airborne transmission of foot-and-mouth disease applied to Swedish livestock
title_full_unstemmed Multilevel model for airborne transmission of foot-and-mouth disease applied to Swedish livestock
title_short Multilevel model for airborne transmission of foot-and-mouth disease applied to Swedish livestock
title_sort multilevel model for airborne transmission of foot-and-mouth disease applied to swedish livestock
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7250458/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32453749
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0232489
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