A quantitative analysis of the spatial and temporal evolution patterns of the bluetongue virus outbreak in the island of Lesvos, Greece in 2014

Chrysovalantis Malesios*, Stauroula Chatzinikolaou, Georgios Chatzilazarou, Myrsini Chatzipanagiotou, Nikolaos Demiris, POLYCHRONIS Kostoulas, Apostolos Kantartzis

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Bluetongue virus (BTV) causes an infectious disease called bluetongue, a vector-borne viral disease of ruminants, which has major implications and causes severe economic damage due to its effect on livestock. These economic costs are mostly ascribed to the trade restrictions imposed during the epidemic period. In August 2014, an epidemic of bluetongue occurred in the island of Lesvos, Greece. The epidemic was severe and evolved over time, lasting until December 2014. The total cases of infected farms were 490, including a total number of 136,368 small ruminants. In this paper, we describe a bluetongue virus serotype 4 (BTV-4) epidemic and utilize Bayesian epidemic models to capture the spatio-temporal spread of the disease. Our study provides important insights into the drivers of BTV transmission and has implications for designing control strategies. The results showed strong spatial autocorrelations, with BTV being more likely to spread between farms located nearby. The spatial modelling results proposed a certain spatial radius (~12 km) around the onset of a similar epidemic for imposing restrictions on animal movement, which can be sufficient for the control of the disease and limit economic damage.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)2073-2085
Number of pages13
JournalTransboundary and Emerging Diseases
Volume67
Issue number5
Early online date10 Apr 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Sept 2020

Bibliographical note

© 2020 The Authors. Transboundary and Emerging Diseases published by Blackwell Verlag GmbH

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Keywords

  • Bayesian model
  • Greece
  • Lesvos
  • bluetongue virus
  • spatio-temporal evolution

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