Implications of within-farm transmission for network dynamics: consequences for the spread of avian influenza.

ABSTRACT: The importance of considering coupled interactions across multiple population scales has not previously been studied for highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) in the British commercial poultry industry. By simulating the within-flock transmission of HPAI using a deterministic S-E-I-R model, and by incorporating an additional environmental class representing infectious faeces, we tracked the build-up of infectious faeces within a poultry house over time. A measure of the transmission risk (TR) was computed for each farm by linking the amount of infectious faeces present each day of an outbreak with data describing the daily on-farm visit schedules for a major British catching company. Larger flocks tended to have greater levels of these catching-team visits. However, where density-depend

SUBMITTER: Nickbakhsh S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3694308 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature