Joanna N de Klerk, Erin E Gorsich, John D Grewar, Benjamin D Atkins, Warren S D Tennant, Karien Labuschagne, Michael J Tildesley

African horse sickness is an equine orbivirus transmitted by Culicoides Latreille biting midges. The disease is endemic in South Africa; however, a unique control area has been set up in the Western Cape where increased surveillance and control measures have been put in place. A deterministic metapopulation model was developed to explore if an outbreak might occur, and how it might develop, if a latently infected horse was to be imported into the control area, by varying the geographical location and months of import. A sensitivity analysis indicated that control measures such as vaccination and vector control are potentially effective to manage the spread of an outbreak, and shortening the vaccination window to July to September may reduce the risk of vaccine-associated outbreaks.

PLoS Computational Biology. September 2023