Food, Global Health 3 min

Major breakthrough for managing avian influenza epidemics: a digital tool to optimise contact tracing in infected farms

PRESS RELEASE – Researchers from INRAE’s Host-Pathogen Interactions Unit (INRAE/ENVT) in Toulouse and Wageningen Bioveterinary Research in the Netherlands have developed a new tool to optimise contact tracing in infected poultry farms. Their results were published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface on 8 January 2025.

Published on 08 January 2025

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Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) is a major threat to domestic poultry, causing substantial economic losses and requiring quick intervention measures to limit propagation. Contact tracing of a poultry farm where the virus has been detected is usually performed on a predefined time window, which may not always be relevant to within-farm transmission dynamics.

The team of Dutch and French researchers propose using mechanistic modelling to help identify epidemiological links of infected farms more efficiently. By modelling the increase in daily mortality in infected farms, the researchers developed a method capable of estimating the probable time of first infection of these farms. This method, integrated into an online app, will enable veterinary services to better target the critical periods to trace contacts, thus saving the resources required for this surveillance while increasing the effectiveness of control measures established on the infected farms.

“Our method offers a tailor-made solution for each farm, enabling veterinary services to react more rapidly and more effectively”, explains Sébastien Lambert, a researcher in INRAE’s Host-Pathogen Interactions Unit.

The online app has been tested on 63 HPAI-infected flocks from France and the Netherlands. Results show high variability in the estimates of the time of first infection, which ranged between 3 and 20 days before official detection, highlighting the importance of a farm-specific approach whenever possible.

These findings will improve the management of HPAI epidemics, as well as of other emerging infectious animal diseases. The researchers are already planning to extend their model to other poultry species, and to adapt it for use in vaccinated poultry flocks.

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