Cooperative hunting between humans and domestic dogs in eastern and northern Australia

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Sparkes ◽  
Guy Ballard ◽  
Peter J. S. Fleming
Keyword(s):  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Domestic Dogs ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Eastern Coast ◽  
Hunting Dogs ◽  
Cooperative Hunting ◽  
Zoonotic Risk ◽  
Hunting Dog ◽  
Wild Dogs

Context Dogs aid hunters in many parts of Australia. Because of close proximity, transfer of zoonotic disease between hunters, hunting dogs and wildlife can, and does, occur. Knowledge about cooperative hunting between humans and domestic dogs and interactions with wildlife in Australia is limited, but is necessary to improve zoonotic-risk mitigation strategies. Aims We aimed to describe the frequency and geographic distribution of hunting with dogs, and to document interactions between them and wildlife that could contribute to zoonosis transmission. Methods Australian hunters were invited via web-based hunting forums, hunting supply stores and government agency communications to complete an online questionnaire about their hunting activities. Key results Most of the 440 responding hunters resided on Australia’s eastern coast. Pest animal management and recreation were their primary drivers for hunting with dogs. Most hunters used one or two dogs, and travelled ≥500 km to target feral pigs, rabbits, birds and deer. Almost a quarter of respondents (N = 313) had lost a dog while hunting, but most (93%, N = 61) were reportedly recovered within a few hours. Half the respondents indicated that they had encountered wild dogs while hunting, and reported a range of consequences from non-contact interactions through to attacks on the hunting dog or hunter. Conclusions Australian hunters frequently used dogs to assist in hunts of birds and introduced mammals, particularly where access was difficult because of rough terrain or thick vegetation. Interactions between hunters and non-target animals such as wild dogs were common, providing potential pathways for the spread of diseases. Furthermore, hunting expeditions >500 km from the point of residence occurred regularly, which could facilitate translocation of important zoonotic diseases between states and the creation of disparate foci of disease spread, even into highly populated areas. Implications Our improved understanding of hunting-dog use in Australia is essential to quantify the risk of disease transmission between wildlife and humans, identify transmission pathways and devise management plans to quash disease outbreaks. To promote rapid detection of exotic diseases, hunters should be encouraged to report unusual wildlife behaviour and interactions with their dogs.

scholarly journals Assessment of Airborne Disease Transmission Risk and Energy Impact of HVAC Mitigation Strategies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Risbeck ◽  
Martin Z. Bazant ◽  
Zhanhong Jiang ◽  
Young M. Lee ◽  
Kirk H. Drees ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Significant Risk ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Transmission Risk ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Particle Removal ◽  
Outdoor Air ◽  
Common Basis ◽  
Air Ventilation ◽  
Airborne Disease

The COVID-19 pandemic has focused renewed attention on the ways in which building HVAC systems may be operated to mitigate the risk of airborne disease transmission. The most common suggestion is to increase outdoor-air ventilation rates so as to dilute the concentrations of infectious aerosol particles indoors. Although this strategy does reduce the likelihood of disease spread, it is often much more costly than other strategies that provide equivalent particle removal or deactivation. To address this tradeoff and arrive at practical recommendations, we explain how different mitigation strategies can be expressed in terms of equivalent outdoor air (EOA) to provide a common basis for energy analysis. We then show the effects of each strategy on EOA delivery and energy cost in simulations of realistic buildings in a variety of climates. Key findings are that in-duct filtration is often the most efficient mitigation strategy, while significant risk reduction generally requires increasing total airflow to the system, either through adjusted HVAC setpoints or standalone disinfection devices.

scholarly journals 18. Prevalence and factors the transmission of disease Transmissible Venereal Tumor (TVT) on dog hunter in Payakumbuh

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 108-113
Author(s):  
Fadli Saputra ◽  
Roslizawaty Roslizawaty ◽  
Amiruddin Amiruddin ◽  
Nuzul Asmilia ◽  
T. Reza Ferasyi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Observational Study ◽  
Sexual Activity ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Prevalence Rate ◽  
Venereal Disease ◽  
Disease Emergence ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Hunting Dogs ◽  
Hunting Dog ◽  
Transmission Of Disease

Tumor (TVT) aim of this study was to find out the prevalence and the factors were of Transmissible Venereal disease transmission on Dog Hunter in Payakumbuh. The study was conducted using a cross-sectional observational study (cross-sectional). Data collected through interviews by using questionnaires and observations of the condition of the Dog Hunter. The owners of hunter dogs were selected by purposive sampling. The obtained data were analyzed descriptively. Interviews were conducted with 110 people hunting dog owners with the total number of hunting dogs were observed as many as 300 individuals. The results showed that the prevalence rate of the Transmissible Venereal Tumor (TVT) disease on Dog Hunter in Payakumbuh is 1,33%. Factors the disease emergence were the mating habits of the dog were uncontrolled, the high levels of dogs sexual activity that was free to roam, the habitual of  sniffing and licking genitals of infected dogs TVT, and also does not apply the principles of biosecurity property.

scholarly journals Estimating cost-benefit of quarantine length for COVID-19 mitigation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Eilersen ◽  
Kim Sneppen
Keyword(s):  
Short Duration ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Relative Effect ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Social Contacts ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
The Cost

ABSTRACTBackgroundThe international community has been put in an unprecedented situation by the COVID-19 pandemic. Creating models to describe and quantify alternative mitigation strategies becomes increasingly urgent.MethodsIn this study, we propose an agent-based model of disease transmission in a society divided into closely connected families, workplaces, and social groups. This allows us to discuss mitigation strategies, including targeted quarantine measures.ResultsWe find that workplace and more diffuse social contacts are roughly equally important to disease spread, and that an effective lockdown must target both. We examine the cost-benefit of replacing a lockdown with tracing and quarantining contacts of the infected. Quarantine can contribute substantially to mitigation, even if it has short duration and is done within households. When reopening society, testing and quarantining is a strategy that is much cheaper in terms of lost workdays than a long lockdown of workplaces.ConclusionsA targeted quarantine strategy is quite efficient with only 5 days of quarantine, and its relative effect increases when supplemented with other measures that reduce disease transmission.

scholarly journals Details of COVID-19 Disease Mitigation Strategies in 17 K-12 Schools in Wood County, Wisconsin

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Falk ◽  
Alison Benda ◽  
Sarah Steffen ◽  
Mikaela DeCoster ◽  
Monica Gandhi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
School Districts ◽  
Elementary Students ◽  
Secondary Students ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Ventilation System ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Return To School ◽  
Full Time ◽  
K 12

Importance: With the current COVID-19 return to school guidelines, over half of American K-12 students are being denied access to full time in-person education, leading to harmful academic, emotional and health consequences. Objective: To describe the specific details of mitigation strategies employed at 17 K-12 schools in Wisconsin during a time of exceptionally high COVID-19 community disease prevalence where in-school transmission was minimal. The aim of this report is to assist school districts and governing bodies in developing full-time return to school plans. Design: Retrospective cohort Setting: Wood County, Wisconsin, August 31 to November 29, 2020 Participants: 5,530 students and staff from 17 schools in 4 school districts Main outcomes and measures: 1. Distancing between primary and secondary students in school 2. School ventilation details 3. Masking among teachers 4. Lunch, recess and bussing practices Results: 89.3% of elementary students included in our study did not maintain 6 feet of physical distancing in the classroom and 94.8% were within 6 feet in lunchrooms. The majority of secondary students (86.2%) were able to maintain 6 feet of distancing in the classroom but no students were greater than 6 feet in the hallways. 58.8% of schools did not install new ventilation systems prior to the school year. Students ate lunch indoors. Bussing of students continued and all elementary children were allowed to go without masks at recess. Conclusion and relevance: In the setting of high community COVID-19 disease transmission, 6 feet of distance between elementary students and major ventilation system renovations in primary or secondary schools do not appear to be necessary to minimize disease spread. Requiring masks at recess and prohibiting bussing also appears unnecessary. These findings may inform guidance on the safe reopening of schools and allow for more children to return to in-person schooling.

scholarly journals Cost–benefit of limited isolation and testing in COVID-19 mitigation

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Eilersen ◽  
Kim Sneppen
Keyword(s):  
Short Duration ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Cost Benefit ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Agent Based Model ◽  
Social Contacts ◽  
Agent Based ◽  
The Cost

Abstract The international community has been put in an unprecedented situation by the COVID-19 pandemic. Creating models to describe and quantify alternative mitigation strategies becomes increasingly urgent. In this study, we propose an agent-based model of disease transmission in a society divided into closely connected families, workplaces, and social groups. This allows us to discuss mitigation strategies, including targeted quarantine measures. We find that workplace and more diffuse social contacts are roughly equally important to disease spread, and that an effective lockdown must target both. We examine the cost–benefit of replacing a lockdown with tracing and quarantining contacts of the infected. Quarantine can contribute substantially to mitigation, even if it has short duration and is done within households. When reopening society, testing and quarantining is a strategy that is much cheaper in terms of lost workdays than a long lockdown. A targeted quarantine strategy is quite efficient with only 5 days of quarantine, and its effect increases when testing is more widespread.

scholarly journals Predictors of free-roaming domestic dogs' contact network centrality and their relevance for rabies control

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Warembourg ◽  
Guillaume Fournié ◽  
Mahamat Fayiz Abakar ◽  
Danilo Alvarez ◽  
Monica Berger-González ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Small World ◽  
Domestic Dogs ◽  
Contact Network ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Dog Ownership ◽  
Contact Patterns ◽  
Rabies Control ◽  
The Social ◽  
Study Sites

AbstractFree roaming domestic dogs (FRDD) are the main vectors for rabies transmission to humans worldwide. To eradicate rabies from a dog population, current recommendations focus on random vaccination with at least 70% coverage. Studies suggest that targeting high-risk subpopulations could reduce the required vaccination coverage, and increase the likelihood of success of elimination campaigns. The centrality of a dog in a contact network can be used as a measure of its potential contribution to disease transmission. Our objectives were to investigate social networks of FRDD in eleven study sites in Chad, Guatemala, Indonesia and Uganda, and to identify characteristics of dogs, and their owners, associated with their centrality in the networks. In all study sites, networks had small-world properties and right-skewed degree distributions, suggesting that vaccinating highly connected dogs would be more effective than random vaccination. Dogs were more connected in rural than urban settings, and the likelihood of contacts was negatively correlated with the distance between dogs’ households. While heterogeneity in dog's connectedness was observed in all networks, factors predicting centrality and likelihood of contacts varied across networks and countries. We therefore hypothesize that the investigated dog and owner characteristics resulted in different contact patterns depending on the social, cultural and economic context. We suggest to invest into understanding of the sociocultural structures impacting dog ownership and thus driving dog ecology, a requirement to assess the potential of targeted vaccination in dog populations.

scholarly journals Identification of effective spreaders in contact networks using dynamical influence

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruaridh A. Clark ◽  
Malcolm Macdonald
Keyword(s):  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Average Rate ◽  
Laplacian Matrix ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Eigenvector Centrality ◽  
Contact Networks ◽  
Human Contact ◽  
Spread Dynamics ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
High Degree

AbstractContact networks provide insights on disease spread due to the duration of close proximity interactions. For systems governed by consensus dynamics, network structure is key to optimising the spread of information. For disease spread over contact networks, the structure would be expected to be similarly influential. However, metrics that are essentially agnostic to the network’s structure, such as weighted degree (strength) centrality and its variants, perform near-optimally in selecting effective spreaders. These degree-based metrics outperform eigenvector centrality, despite disease spread over a network being a random walk process. This paper improves eigenvector-based spreader selection by introducing the non-linear relationship between contact time and the probability of disease transmission into the assessment of network dynamics. This approximation of disease spread dynamics is achieved by altering the Laplacian matrix, which in turn highlights why nodes with a high degree are such influential disease spreaders. From this approach, a trichotomy emerges on the definition of an effective spreader where, for susceptible-infected simulations, eigenvector-based selections can either optimise the initial rate of infection, the average rate of infection, or produce the fastest time to full infection of the network. Simulated and real-world human contact networks are examined, with insights also drawn on the effective adaptation of ant colony contact networks to reduce pathogen spread and protect the queen ant.

scholarly journals Livestock movement informs the risk of disease spread in traditional production systems in East Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Divine Ekwem ◽  
Thomas A. Morrison ◽  
Richard Reeve ◽  
Jessica Enright ◽  
Joram Buza ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Production Systems ◽  
Control Strategies ◽  
Herd Size ◽  
Transmission Risk ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Transmission Potential ◽  
Spatial And Temporal Scales ◽  
Transmission Distance ◽  
Risk Of Disease

AbstractIn Africa, livestock are important to local and national economies, but their productivity is constrained by infectious diseases. Comprehensive information on livestock movements and contacts is required to devise appropriate disease control strategies; yet, understanding contact risk in systems where herds mix extensively, and where different pathogens can be transmitted at different spatial and temporal scales, remains a major challenge. We deployed Global Positioning System collars on cattle in 52 herds in a traditional agropastoral system in western Serengeti, Tanzania, to understand fine-scale movements and between-herd contacts, and to identify locations of greatest interaction between herds. We examined contact across spatiotemporal scales relevant to different disease transmission scenarios. Daily cattle movements increased with herd size and rainfall. Generally, contact between herds was greatest away from households, during periods with low rainfall and in locations close to dipping points. We demonstrate how movements and contacts affect the risk of disease spread. For example, transmission risk is relatively sensitive to the survival time of different pathogens in the environment, and less sensitive to transmission distance, at least over the range of the spatiotemporal definitions of contacts that we explored. We identify times and locations of greatest disease transmission potential and that could be targeted through tailored control strategies.

scholarly journals Addressing the COVID-19 transmission in inner Brazil by a mathematical model

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
G. B. Almeida ◽  
T. N. Vilches ◽  
C. P. Ferreira ◽  
C. M. C. B. Fortaleza
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Model ◽  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Abiotic Factors ◽  
Severe Pneumonia ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Control Disease ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Novel Coronavirus ◽  
Public Health Strategies

AbstractIn 2020, the world experienced its very first pandemic of the globalized era. A novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, is the causative agent of severe pneumonia and has rapidly spread through many nations, crashing health systems and leading a large number of people to death. In Brazil, the emergence of local epidemics in major metropolitan areas has always been a concern. In a vast and heterogeneous country, with regional disparities and climate diversity, several factors can modulate the dynamics of COVID-19. What should be the scenario for inner Brazil, and what can we do to control infection transmission in each of these locations? Here, a mathematical model is proposed to simulate disease transmission among individuals in several scenarios, differing by abiotic factors, social-economic factors, and effectiveness of mitigation strategies. The disease control relies on keeping all individuals’ social distancing and detecting, followed by isolating, infected ones. The model reinforces social distancing as the most efficient method to control disease transmission. Moreover, it also shows that improving the detection and isolation of infected individuals can loosen this mitigation strategy. Finally, the effectiveness of control may be different across the country, and understanding it can help set up public health strategies.

scholarly journals Sheep scab spatial distribution: the roles of transmission pathways

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Joanne Nixon ◽  
Ellen Brooks-Pollock ◽  
Richard Wall
Keyword(s):  
Disease Transmission ◽  
Movement Control ◽  
Cost Effective ◽  
Infected Sheep ◽  
Disease Spread ◽  
Psoroptes Ovis ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Sheep Scab ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Background Ovine psoroptic mange (sheep scab) is a highly pathogenic contagious infection caused by the mite Psoroptes ovis. Following 21 years in which scab was eradicated in the UK, it was inadvertently reintroduced in 1972 and, despite the implementation of a range of control methods, its prevalence increased steadily thereafter. Recent reports of resistance to macrocyclic lactone treatments may further exacerbate control problems. A better understanding of the factors that facilitate its transmission are required to allow improved management of this disease. Transmission of infection occurs within and between contiguous sheep farms via infected sheep-to-sheep or sheep–environment contact and through long-distance movements of infected sheep, such as through markets. Methods A stochastic metapopulation model was used to investigate the impact of different transmission routes on the spatial pattern of outbreaks. A range of model scenarios were considered following the initial infection of a cluster of highly connected contiguous farms. Results Scab spreads between clusters of neighbouring contiguous farms after introduction but when long-distance movements are excluded, infection then self-limits spatially at boundaries where farm connectivity is low. Inclusion of long-distance movements is required to generate the national patterns of disease spread observed. Conclusions Preventing the movement of scab infested sheep through sales and markets is essential for any national management programme. If effective movement control can be implemented, regional control in geographic areas where farm densities are high would allow more focussed cost-effective scab management. Graphical Abstract

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