What Is the Real Influence of Climatic and Environmental Factors in the Outbreaks of African Swine Fever?

SIMPLE SUMMARY: African Swine fever is present on the African, European and Asian continents, causing devastating economic impact due to the mandatory mass depopulation in confirmed outbreaks. Using the data reported by the Romanian National Sanitary Veterinary and Food Safety Authority, we created a database with all the localities from Romania where the outbreaks were confirmed between 2020 and 2021 as well as the geoclimatic features of those areas. The database was then used to statistically analyze the frequency of confirmed outbreaks in relation with specific climatic and environmental factors. Our results show that such studies need to be continued in order to have a better understanding of the geoclimatic risk factors in the transmission of African swine fever virus. ABSTRACT: African swine fever has a significant economic, social and environmental impact due to official regulation of the disease, namely the mass depopulation of all pigs in confirmed outbreaks. The main objective of the present study was to statistically analyze the possible correlation between the number of outbreaks and infected pigs from backyard farms with the altitude, seasonal average annual humidity, and average temperature during spring, summer, autumn and winter, as well as the distance from forests, rivers, and lakes in Romania. The study included all infected backyard pigs with African swine fever virus (n = 7764) and outbreaks (n = 404) that occurred in Romania between 6 February 2020 and 2 March 2021. The number of infected pigs and ASF outbreaks were significantly higher in localities at altitudes between 100 and 500 m, average annual humidity between 60% and 80%, average spring temperature between 10 and 14 °C, average summer temperature between 16 and 22 °C, average autumn temperature between 10 and 13 °C, average winter temperatures between −1 and 2 °C, and at distances of less than 5 km from the forests, less than 15 km from lakes and less than 5 km from the rivers. The number of affected pigs decreased significantly at summer temperatures below 16 °C.