Modelling assessment of the different paths of between-farm transmission of avian influenza HPAI in Northern Italy in 2021--2022
- 1University of Trento
Abstract
We propose a stochastic epidemic model to describe the spread of avian influenza in a network of poultry farms. We consider three main paths of infection transmission between poultry farms: from nearby farms, mainly through airborne diffusion; from farms belonging to the same company, through shared veterinarians, forage providers and similar; from undetected small farms or wildlife. From the parameter estimation, based on a modified Expectation-Maximization algorithm, we infer that approximately 63% of the farms were infected from nearby ones, with an infection force declining with distance; of these, more than one third belonged to the same company of the estimated infector. About 20% were infected from premises belonging to the same company but farther away than the distance threshold of 2 km; the remaining ones from wildlife or unidentified sources. These estimates have been validated by a comparison with genetic data, available for a subset of the farms: the genetic distance between two farms identified, with high probability, as an infector-infectee pair is much lower than between random pairs. These results may help in the implementation of tailored prevention and control measures for future outbreaks.
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BibTeX
@misc{sensi2026modelling,
title = {{Modelling assessment of the different paths of between-farm transmission of avian influenza HPAI in Northern Italy in 2021--2022}},
author = {M. Sensi and S. Sottile and D. Fornasiero and I. Monne and P. Mulatti and A. Pugliese},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.64898/2026.09.19.752832},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.19.752832v1},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Modelling assessment of the different paths of between-farm transmission of avian influenza HPAI in Northern Italy in 2021--2022
AU - M. Sensi
AU - S. Sottile
AU - D. Fornasiero
AU - I. Monne
AU - P. Mulatti
AU - A. Pugliese
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/19
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.09.19.752832
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.09.19.752832v1
AB - We propose a stochastic epidemic model to describe the spread of avian influenza in a network of poultry farms. We consider three main paths of infection transmission between poultry farms: from nearby farms, mainly through airborne diffusion; from farms belonging to the same company, through shared veterinarians, forage providers and similar; from undetected small farms or wildlife. From the parameter estimation, based on a modified Expectation-Maximization algorithm, we infer that approximately 63% of the farms were infected from nearby ones, with an infection force declining with distance; of these, more than one third belonged to the same company of the estimated infector. About 20% were infected from premises belonging to the same company but farther away than the distance threshold of 2 km; the remaining ones from wildlife or unidentified sources. These estimates have been validated by a comparison with genetic data, available for a subset of the farms: the genetic distance between two farms identified, with high probability, as an infector-infectee pair is much lower than between random pairs. These results may help in the implementation of tailored prevention and control measures for future outbreaks.
ER -