Quantitative risk assessment of African swine fever virus introduction to Japan via pork products brought in air passengers' luggage.

Abstract

The spread of African swine fever (ASF) has reached pandemic levels over the last decade, and outbreaks of this disease in China, Mongolia, Vietnam and Cambodia in 2018 and 2019 could accelerate its transmission to neighbouring Asian territories. Thus, the risk that the ASF virus (ASFV) will be introduced to disease-free territories increases each year. Since Japan is an island nation, the most likely way in which ASFV would be introduced is via pork products brought in air passengers' luggage (PPAP). Therefore, in the present study, we assessed the risk of ASFV introduction to Japan via PPAP. For the purposes of this analysis, we considered 214 international commercial flights travelling from 47 origin territories to 31 destination airports as potential routes of ASFV introduction via PPAP. The risk was estimated quantitatively through a stochastic model that considered the volume of air passengers' luggage, the amount of confiscated pork products that were carried in air passengers' luggage and the disease status of the origin territory. The overall mean annual probability of ASFV introduction to Japan via PPAP was found to be 0.941 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.661-1.000], which approximately corresponds to one introduction every 1.06years. At the origin territory level, Mongolia was led as the highest risk territory, with a risk of 0.864 (95% CI, 0.434-1.000), followed by China (0.697; 0.223-0.999), Vietnam (0.662; 0.196-0.998) and the Russian Federation (0.136; 0.018-0.401). At the destination airport level, Narita International Airport had the highest risk (0.905; 0.537-1.000), followed by Kansai International Airport (0.496; 0.109-0.961), Tokyo International Airport (0.389; 0.072-0.879) and Chubu Centrair International Airport (0.338; 0.058-0.816). This information will help improve risk management activities and monitoring systems to prevent the introduction of ASFV to Japan.