Rate of inter-herd transmission of classical swine fever virus by different types of contact during the 1997–8 epidemic in The Netherlands

Abstract

In this study we quantified the rate at which classical swine fever had been transmitted by several different types of inter-herd contact during the 1997–8 epidemic in The Netherlands. During that epidemic 428 CSFV-infected pig herds were detected, 403 of which were included in this study. The estimated rates of transmission were 0·065 per shipment of live pigs, 0·011 per contact by a pig transportation lorry, 0·0068 per person contact, 0·0007 per dose of semen, 0·0065 per contact with a potentially contaminated pig assembly point, 0·027 per week per infected herd within a radius of 500 metres and 0·0078 per week per infected herd at a distance between 500 and 1000 metres. These transmission rates can be used to optimize the strategy to stop future epidemics of CSF in The Netherlands. In addition, the analysis demonstrated in this paper, can be used to quantify CSFV transmission rates from other epidemics.