This is our Friday rubric: every week a new Science Page from the Bob Morrison’s Swine Health Monitoring Project. The previous editions of the science page are available on our website.
This week we are sharing a report on PRRSV eradication efforts in Chile.
Key Points
- After being introduced in 1999, PRRS was eradicated from the country in 2012.
- In 2013 PRRS was again detected, sequence analysis suggested this was a new introduction to the country.
- The Chilean swine industry and the Chilean Veterinary Services (SAG) expect to again eliminate the disease in the near future.
PRRS is a notifiable disease in Chile. It was first detected in 1999, and in 2000 both the swine industry and government joined efforts to eradicate the disease by a series of coordinated events including a mixture of herd closure and depopulation of infected premises. Vaccination was not allowed in the country to control PRRSV infection. The eradication program was completed in 2007 and as a result, Chile was declared PRRSV free in 2012. Nevertheless, on October 2013 clinical signs compatible with PRRSV were reported in a commercial sow farm. Since then, all commercial herds performed surveillance activities according to a risk score based on location and biosecurity measures. From October 2013 to October 2017, approximately 153,000 blood samples have been analyzed.
Viral sequences obtained during the 2013 outbreak were compared to sequences from the early 2000s outbreak in Chile. Results showed a large genetic difference between isolates from both outbreaks. Further analyses demonstrated that the Chilean virus was closely related to a virus circulating in the state of Indiana in the US at the time of introduction. These results suggested that the latest PRRSV outbreak in Chile was most likely due to a new introduction into the country rather than a reemergence of a strain previously detected in Chile.
By October 2017, the disease was restricted to approximately 45,000 animals in six commercial farms owned by two companies that currently have eradication programs in place. These six infected commercial sites are clustered in three areas. (See figure above)