All 5 entries tagged Fmdv

Some Answers

The mystery surrounding the month-long gap between FMD cases seems at least partially solved. DEFRA note that the lesions on the most recently-culled infectious premise in Surrey were a couple of weeks old. That farm is just outside the old surveillance zone, and it seems that the farmer failed to spot the FMD symptoms in his animals; this provides an explanation of where the infection we saw on the 12th came from. Very embarrasing for the farmer concerned, of course, but from an epidemiologist’s point of view, somewhat of a relief – we now have a scenario that explains why FMD has re-appeared over a month after the last farm was culled out, and it isn’t one of the nightmare ones I was worried about when I wrote my previous entry.

Separately, a temporary control zone has been established near Solihull. I’ll stick my neck out here, and say that I don’t expect FMD to be confirmed.

: 19 Sep 2007 17:30 |  Tags: Epidemiology Fmdv Veterinary |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Not a good day

DEFRA has confirmed what nobody wanted to hear – foot and mouth has struck in Surrey again. The BBC were reporting it a while before the official announcement came, but I guess they have better spies than I do!

The new case is about 10 miles from Pirbright, some distance from the cases we saw in August. The strain is, as yet, unknown, but I think the assumption until proven otherwise must be that this will be the same O1 BFS67 strain that leaked from the Pirbright site to cause the earlier outbreak. The HSE’s final report into biosecurity at Pirbright makes for uncomfortable reading – while we will never know which of the three facilities on-site leaked the virus, it seems that there were several significant failings in the category 4 biosecurity arrangements on that site which combined with heavy flooding to cause the outbreak.

What’s got me scratching my head is the time-lag before this outbreak; indeed, when I heard this morning there was a suspect case, I was assuming it would turn out not to be confirmed. FMDV (the virus that causes foot and mouth) doesn’t survive for long in the environment, so why has this case appeared now, given the last infected animals were culled on the 9th of August? The OIE’s handy summary gives 14 days as the upper end of the incubation period. It can survive in the environment if conditions are suitable for up to a month, but the previous infectious premises will have been rigorously disinfected.

I think that means that direct transmission from the August infectious premises is fairly unlikely to be the cause of this outbreak. I can’t find another more plausible hypothesis, though; did more contaminated soil leave Pirbright during the recent past (surely not, biosecurity was substantially tightened up during the HSE investigation)? are there other infectious animals out there that we haven’t spotted (again, this new case is only just outside the old surveillance zone, so animals nearby would have been inspected regularly)? Even if it is direct transmission from the previous infected farms, how did the virus escape disinfection? At this stage, we will have to wait and see. Easier to do as an epidemiologist than as a farmer, trying to get back on track after the previous round of movement restrictions…

: 12 Sep 2007 15:50 |  Tags: Epidemiology Fmdv |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Podcasting on FMD

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/audio/?podcastItem=footandmouth.mp3

Last week I was interviewed about foot and mouth disease (and my research, which doesn’t address foot and mouth specifically, but rather looks at the impact of livestock movements on the dynamics of farm animal diseases more generally) by Tom Abbott of the Communications Office.

I find I tend to “dry up” the moment someone points a microphone (or, worse, a camera) at me, but I think the interview went reasonably well, and it helped that Tom had done his homework about the current outbreak. In any case, you can hear the edited result here. It’s always a bit odd hearing your own voice played back to you!

: 20 Aug 2007 14:52 |  Tags: Epidemiology Fmdv Podcasting |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Foot and Mouth: a second confirmed case, and the HSE's initial report

Writing about web page http://www.hse.gov.uk/news/archive/07aug/pirbright.htm

DEFRA have confirmed that a second farm has been culled, and foot and mouth disease confirmed. The second farm is within the original Protection Zone, so this doesn’t represent a significant geographic spread. There’s an interesting question as to whether this is another primary case, or whether it was infected by the first farm. It may never be possible to answer this unambiguously, but everyone will be hoping it’s another primary case, as that would mean that there have been no secondary cases so far still. This would be good, as it would mean that the current containment policies appear to be working.

The Health and Safety Executive has published its initial report on the suspected biosecurity breaches at the Pirbright site. I noted yesterday that Pirbright was the likely source of this outbreak, and I’m a little disappointed to note that the HSE report doesn’t tell us much more than what we already knew or could surmise. It rules out airborne spread as a “negligible likelihood”. The likelihood of waterborne spread is also assessed to be “negligable”, although further investigations are being carried out.

That leaves human movement as “a real possibility”. Again, further investigations are being carried out. That would be embarrasing if it were shown to be the case! The tabloids have been making much of the HSE’s failure to rule out deliberate sabotage, but that seems unlikely to me: if you wanted to release FMD, you wouldn’t pick a bit of Surrey that’s only lightly populated by livestock farms to do it in, and you’d pick a time of year when there were more movements of animals going on. Hopefully we’ll actually have some useful findings from the HSE in due course…

: 08 Aug 2007 11:49 |  Tags: Epidemiology Fmdv |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Foot and Mouth in Surrey

I’ve just got back from the Society for Mathematical Biology annual meeting in San Jose; my colleagues and I were a little concerned to hear of a confirmed outbreak of foot and mouth disease (FMD) on a farm in Surrey last Friday.

It’s too early to say for definite how this outbreak will pan out, but a few things can be noted now. Firstly, the government moved quickly – following initial reports, a temporary restriction zone (1km) was put in place at around noon on Friday, and by 9pm FMD had been confirmed, and movements of susceptible cattle halted nation-wide. This is marked contrast to previous epidemics in 1951,1967, and 2001, when (as noted by the enquiries that followed each outbreak) movement restrictions were not put in place rapidly enough, which made those outbreaks considerably worse than they might otherwise have been.

There is no sign as yet of secondary cases, which is positive (although given a normal latent period of 3-6 days, we cannot be sure that there won’t be some still to come); we don’t have much live data to go on as yet, but given movement data from previous years and the local geography, spread outside the current 10km Surveillance Zone seems unlikely. I hope I don’t end up eating my words…!

The strain isolated from the culled animals is very similar to the 1967 epidemic’s strain, which isn’t thought to be currently “at large”, raising the question of where it came from. The nearby laboratory site at Pirbright seems a likely candidate, althought that has yet to be confirmed. The Institute for Animal Health, the world reference laboratory for FMD (amongst other things!) is on that site, as is Merial’s FMD vaccine manufacture plant. Both have 1967-strain FMDV, the latter in rather larger quantities than the former. Both have strict biosecurity controls; it will be interesting to see the results of the HSE’s investigation, due tomorrow.

In the mean time, we can just wait and see what unfolds. Interesting times…

: 06 Aug 2007 14:08 |  Tags: Epidemiology Fmdv |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem