Spatial Veterinary Epidemiology to Support Disease Surveillance and Biosecurity

Editor’s note: Each semester, students in the Geospatial Analytics Ph.D. program can apply for a Geospatial Analytics Travel Award that supports research travel or presentations at conferences. The following is a guest post by travel award winner Felipe Sanchez as part of the Student Travel series.

The International Symposium of Veterinary Epidemiology and Economics (ISVEE) is a multi-disciplinary conference, held every 4 years, that brings together graduate students, post-docs, junior and senior researchers and health policymakers from all over the world to discuss and exchange information on advancements in the field of veterinary epidemiology. This year, I was honored to receive a travel award from the Center for Geospatial Analytics to present my research at the 16th ISVEE held in Halifax, Nova Scotia Aug 7–12, 2022. The research presented was included in the Epidemiologic Principles and Methods, Spatial Epidemiology session and was titled “The spatiotemporal relative risk distribution of Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome virus (PRRSV) in the Southeast, U.S.”

PRRSV is one of the most economically important diseases impacting the swine industry in North America. Despite advances in reducing the incidence of PRRSV through enhanced biosecurity protocols, surveillance and vaccination strategies, PRRSV remains widely distributed with outbreaks causing millions of dollars in losses annually. Much of the incidence of PRRSV has been attributed to gaps in the understanding of PRRSV transmission occurring between farms at close geographical proximity, usually referred to as local transmission. 

Our work focused on exploring the geographical variation in disease risk based on the distribution of farms reporting PRRSV outbreaks (cases) and the underlying at-risk (control) farm population, to generate PRRSV relative risk estimates through time. Results gained from this study highlighted areas of significant high PRRSV risk and defined the maximum distance at which the risk is negligible for the transmission of PRRSV between farms. Secondly, we assessed the effects of environmental variables, between-farm movements, and on-farm biosecurity features on PRRSV outbreak occurrence. Results from this study provide important information that may be used to guide the reinforcement of biosecurity and surveillance strategies for farms within areas of high PRRSV risk.