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Swine Health Information Center can now predict “with some certainty” PEDv outbreak before it occurs
The director of the Swine Health Information Center says one of the highlights of 2020 was advancing research that is opening the door to accurately predicting disease outbreaks before they occur.
Dr. Paul Sundberg tells Brownfield they are analyzing producer data from the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv) outbreak in 2013.
“Weather, the topography around farms, the movement arounds farms, those types of things that happen and resulted in a PED outbreak.”
Armed with that data, he says researchers can now predict with some certainty a PED outbreak on a farm about two weeks before it’s going to happen.
“I’ve spent my whole veterinary career too often chasing diseases and chasing outbreaks, (and) this thing could give us an opportunity to predict. And if it gives us an opportunity to predict, we can get the opportunity to prevent.”
Sundberg says he’s excited to further this project and possibly extend it to other diseases like Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) or Mycoplasma.
