Spreading dynamics in a cattle trade network: Size, speed, typical profile and consequences on epidemic control strategies

PLoS One. 2019 Jun 10;14(6):e0217972. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0217972. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

Infections can spread among livestock notably because infected animals can be brought to uncontaminated holdings, therefore exposing a new group of susceptible animals to the disease. As a consequence, the structure and dynamics of animal trade networks is a major focus of interest to control zoonosis. We investigate the impact of the chronology of animal trades on the dynamics of the process. Precisely, in the context of a basic SI model spreading, we measure on the French database of bovine transfers to what extent a snapshot-based analysis of the cattle trade networks overestimates the epidemic risks. We bring into light that an analysis taking into account the chronology of interactions would give a much more accurate assessment of both the size and speed of the process. For this purpose, we model data as a temporal network that we analyze using the link stream formalism in order to mix structural and temporal aspects. We also show that in this dataset, a basic SI spreading comes down in most cases to a simple two-phases scenario: a waiting period, with few contacts and low activity, followed by a linear growth of the number of infected holdings. Using this portrait of the spreading process, we identify efficient strategies to control a potential outbreak, based on the identification of specific elements of the link stream which have a higher probability to be involved in a spreading process.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • Cattle
  • Cattle Diseases / epidemiology*
  • Contact Tracing / methods*
  • Disease Outbreaks / veterinary
  • Epidemics
  • Europe / epidemiology
  • Livestock
  • Models, Theoretical
  • Records
  • Risk Factors
  • Spatio-Temporal Analysis
  • Transportation
  • Zoonoses / epidemiology
  • Zoonoses / prevention & control*

Grants and funding

This work is funded in part by the Ile-de-France Region and its program FUI21 under grant 16010629 (iTRAC), it is also funded by the French Ministry of Agriculture and Food, through a FCPR PhD grant to AP. There was no additional external funding received for this study.