INRAE is announcing today a major advance in the management of avian influenza epidemics: until now, tracing contacts on a farm where the virus was detected was based on fixed time windows, often poorly adapted to the dynamics of virus transmission, specific to each farm. A team of Franco-Dutch researchers is now proposing to use mathematical modeling to optimize the identification of epidemiological links between infected farms. “By modeling the increase in daily mortalities observed in infected farms, scientists have developed a method capable of estimating the probable dates of the first infections in these farms. This method, integrated into an online application, will allow veterinary services to better target critical periods for contact tracing, thus saving the resources necessary for this monitoring while increasing the effectiveness of control measures put in place on infected farms.” specifies the press release. This advance was the subject of a publication in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface on January 8, 2025.
“Our approach offers a tailor-made solution for each farm, allowing veterinary services to react more quickly and more effectively,” explains Sébastien Lambert, Toulouse researcher in the IHAP research unit.
The application, accessible via an online website, was tested on 63 infected farms in France and the Netherlands. The results show great variability in dates of first infection, ranging from 3 to 20 days before official detection, highlighting the importance of a personalized approach to each farm when possible.
The researchers are already planning to extend their model to other poultry species and adapt it for farms vaccinated against HPAI. This model could also be extended to other emerging animal infectious diseases.
The link to the application: https://first-inf.sk8.inrae.fr/
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