Schedule

Topics:

1. Brief discussion of the critical content of an FMD contingency plan (and related control strategies).
2. An overview of the regional antigen bank, BANVACO.
3. Review the emergency resource storage management system in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil (10-15 minutes).

Revisiting FMD and response plans:

1. Review the importance of response plans in outbreak events.
2. Introduction to disease transmission models.
3. Application of simulation models in the design and revision of control strategies.
4. Integration of model outputs in an outbreak event.

Introduction to Rstudio installing R/Rstudio and MHSpread

The whole game: why R and Rstudio?

1. Installation of R, Rstudio, packages.
2. Review the architecture of MHASpread.
3. Load the MHASpread package and set the environment.
4. Define initial conditions.
5. Select the initially infected farm.
6. Export and interpret outputs, including numeric summaries and plots.

Simulating FMD epidemics with and without countermeasures.

Select the initial infection condition (with your own data)

1. Seed infections and simulate disease spread (epidemic size).
2. Simulate control and eradication actions (vaccination, depopulation, movement restrictions).
3. Export and interpret outputs.

Read the papers for discussion and/or work on your (country) data (subject to change). .

Simulate FMD introduction and spread from swine, bovine, and small ruminant populations

1. Seed infections and estimate epidemic trajectories.
2. Implement control and eradication actions.
3. Extract model outputs for decision-making.
4. Using the model outputs, propose the next steps for elimination.

Simulation of alternative control scenarios

1. Change control zone sizes.
2. Contact tracing of movement networks.
3. Increase the duration of control zones and surveillance activities.

Expert opinion will be used to select and adjust transmission parameters in various scenarios (i.e., estimates on the time intervals for laboratory confirmation after detection of infected facilities and for starting the depopulation protocol).

Control plans for foot-and-mouth disease.

1. Based on the simulations you have run, what would you revise about your current FMD contingency plan?
2. Final discussions.