Abstract
African swine fever (ASF) is an emerging viral contagious disease affecting domestic pigs (DP) and wild boar (WB). ASF causes significant economic damage to the pig industry worldwide due to nearly 100% mortality and the absence of medical treatments. Since 2019, an intensive spread of ASF has been observed in the Russian Far East region. This spread raises concerns for epidemiologists and ecologists given the potential threat to the WB population, which is an essential member of the region's wild ungulates and provides a notable share of food resources for predatory species. This study aims to determine the genotype of ASF virus circulating in the region, reveal the spatio-temporal patterns of the ASF outbreaks' emergence, and assess the potential reduction of the regional fauna because of expected depopulation of WB. The first historical case of ASF in the study region was caused by an African swine fever virus (ASFV) isolated from DPs and belonging to Genotype 2, CVR1; IGR-2 (TRS +). Sequencing results showed no significant differences among ASFV strains currently circulating in the Russian Federation, Europe, and China. The spatiotemporal analysis with the space-time permutations model demonstrated the presence of six statistically significant clusters of ASF outbreaks with three clusters in DPs and one cluster in WBs. DP outbreaks prevail in the north-west regions of the study area, while northern regions demonstrate a mixture of DP and WB outbreaks. Colocation analysis did not reveal a statistically significant pattern of grouping of one category of outbreaks around the others. The possible damage to the region's fauna was assessed by modeling the total body mass of wild ungulates before and after the wild boars' depopulation, considering a threshold density of WB population of 0.025 head/km2, according to the currently in force National Plan on the ASF Eradication in Russia. The results suggest the total mass of ungulates of the entire study region will likely decrease by 8.4% (95% CI: 4.1–13.0%), while it may decrease by 33.6% (19.3–46.1%) in the Primorsky Krai, thereby posing an undeniable threat to the predatory species of the region.
Highlights
IntroductionThe African swine fever (ASF) virus (ASFV) belongs to the Asfarviridae family and affects both domestic pigs (DP) and wild boars (WB)
African swine fever (ASF) is among the most dangerous diseases of swine and is known to cause considerable damage to pig production in many countries worldwide [1,2,3,4,5].The ASF virus (ASFV) belongs to the Asfarviridae family and affects both domestic pigs (DP) and wild boars (WB)
We considered the ASF epidemic situation in the following four administrative divisions located in the Far Eastern Russian Federation: Primorsky Krai, Khabarovsk Krai, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, and Amur Oblast (Figure 2)
Summary
The ASF virus (ASFV) belongs to the Asfarviridae family and affects both domestic pigs (DP) and wild boars (WB). One of the clusters is located in Sardinia (Italy), where the disease was registered in 1978 and is represented by ASFV strains belonging to genotype 1 [10]. The second cluster is widespread in North-Eastern Europe and the Russian Federation caused by strains of the ASFV belonging to genotype 2 [4]. The latter is highly virulent, causing acute disease and resulting in mortality rates of 94.5–100.0% in both WB and DP [11,12,13,14,15]
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