U.S. Department of Agriculture: Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service

 

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Authors

Joshua Hewitt, Utah State UniversityFollow
Grete Wilson-Henjum, Utah State University
Derek T. Collins, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, National Wildlife Disease Program, Fort Collins, Colorado
Timothy J. Linder, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, National Wildlife Disease Program, Fort Collins, Colorado
Julianna B. Lenoch, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, National Wildlife Disease Program, Fort Collins, Colorado
Jonathan D. Heale, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, Fort Collins, Colorado
Christopher A. Quintanal, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, Fort Collins, Colorado
Robert Pleszewski, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, Fort Collins, Colorado
Dillon S. McBride, Ohio State University
Andrew S. Bowman, Ohio State University
Jeffrey C. Chandler, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Disease Diagnostic Laboratory, Fort Collins, ColoradoFollow
Susan A. Shriner, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, National Wildlife Research Center, Fort Collins, ColoradoFollow
Sarah N. Bevins, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, National Wildlife Disease Program, Fort Collins, ColoradoFollow
Dennis J. Kohler, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, National Wildlife Disease Program, Fort Collins, ColoradoFollow
Richard B. Chipman, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, Fort Collins, ColoradoFollow
Allen L. Gosser, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, Fort Collins, ColoradoFollow
David L. Bergman, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, Fort Collins, ColoradoFollow
Thomas J. DeLiberto, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services, Fort Collins, ColoradoFollow
Kim M. Pepin, United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, National Wildlife Research Center, Fort Collins, ColoradoFollow

ORCID IDs

Hewitt https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0844-7769

Wilson-Henjum https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2284-8745

Collins https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3723-2353

Linder https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3440-0574

Lenoch https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3995-8895

Quintanal https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0687-0528

Pleszewski https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1481-0242

McBride https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7408-3959

Bowman https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0738-8453

Chandler https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3318-135X

Shriner https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0349-7182

Bevins https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4999-6836

Kohler https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6712-505X

Chipman https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4145-678X

Bergman https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6757-643X

DeLiberto https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1115-1472

Pepin https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9931-8312

Document Type

Article

Date of this Version

2024

Citation

Transboundary and Emerging Diseases (2024) 2024: 7589509, 11 pages

doi: 10.1155/2024/7589509

Academic editor: Shao-Lun Zhai

Comments

United States government work

Abstract

Understanding pathogen emergence in new host species is fundamental for developing prevention and response plans for human and animal health. We leveraged a large-scale surveillance dataset coordinated by United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and State Natural Resources Agencies to quantify the outbreak dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 in North American white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus; WTD) throughout its range in the United States. Local epidemics in WTD were well approximated by a single-outbreak peak followed by fade out. Outbreaks peaked early in the northeast and mid- Atlantic. Local effective reproduction ratios of SARS-CoV-2 were between 1 and 2.5. Ten percent of variability in peak prevalence was explained by human infection pressure. This, together with the similar peak infection prevalence times across many counties and single-peak outbreak dynamics followed by fade out, suggest that widespread transmission via human-to-deer spillover may have been an important driver of the patterns and persistence. We provide a framework for inferring population-level epidemiological processes through joint analysis of many sparsely observed local outbreaks (landscape-scale surveillance data) and linking epidemiological parameters to ecological risk factors. The framework combines mechanistic and statistical models that can identify and track local outbreaks in long-term infection surveillance monitoring data.

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