Rewiring cattle movements to limit infection spread

Abstract

Cattle tracing databases have become major resources for representing demographic processes of livestock and assessing potential risk of infections spreading by trade. The herds registered in these databases are nodes of a network of commercial movements, which can be altered to lower the risk of disease transmission. In this study, we develop an algorithm aimed at reducing the number of infected animals and herds, by rewiring specific movements responsible for trade flows from high- to low-prevalence herds. The algorithm is coupled with a generic computational model based on the French cattle movement tracing database (BDNI), and used to describe different scenarios for the spread of infection within and between herds from a recent outbreak (epidemic) or a five-year-old outbreak (endemic). Results show that rewiring successfully contains infections to a limited number of herds, especially if the outbreak is recent and the estimation of disease prevalence frequent, while the respective impact of the parameters of the algorithm depend on the infection parameters. Allowing any animal movement from high to low-prevalence herds reduces the effectiveness of the algorithm in epidemic settings, while frequent and fine-grained prevalence assessments improve the impact of the algorithm in endemic settings. Our approach focusing on a few commercial movements is expected to lead to substantial improvements in the control of a targeted disease, although changes in the network structure should be monitored for potential vulnerabilities to other diseases. This general algorithm could be applied to any network of controlled individual movements liable to spread disease.