Expected effect of herd size, production type and between herd distances on the dynamic of between herd disease spread

• Studies of between herd contacts may provide important insight to disease transmission dynamics. By comparing the result from models with different level of details in the description of animal movement we studied how factors influence the final epidemic size as well as the stochastic behavior of an outbreak. We investigated the effect of contact heterogeneity of pig herds in Sweden due to herd size, between herd distance and production type. Our comparative study suggests that the production type structure is the most influential factor. Hence, our results imply that production type is the most important factor to obtain valid data for and include when modeling and analyzing this system. The study also revealed that all included factors reduce the final epidemic size and also have, yet more diverse, effects on initial rate of disease spread. This implies that a large set of factors ought to be included to assess relevant predictions when modeling disease spread between herds. Furthermore our results show that a more detailed model predicts more stochasticity in the outbreak dynamics and conclude that this is an important factor to consider in risk assessment.

Nyckelord

Disease spread modeling

Heterogeneous contact structure

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