Key result
Missing and inaccurate epidemic data prevent the successful determination of farm infectiousness trends.
Why the study?
Most mathematical models of the UK 2001 foot-and-mouth disease epidemic assumed constant infectiousness of infected premises, but uncertainty exists about this assumption and data quality may affect estimates of infectiousness trends.
Missing and inaccurate epidemic data prevent the reliable estimation of time-dependent changes in farm infectiousness using mathematical models.
Data quality precludes robust estimation of infectiousness trends in the 2001 epidemic; leaves open whether constant infectiousness assumptions hold for future FMD models.
Most of the mathematical models that were developed to study the UK 2001 foot-and-mouth disease epidemic assumed that the infectiousness of infected premises was constant over their infectious periods. However, there is some controversy over whether this assumption is appropriate. Uncertainty about which farm infected which in 2001 means that the only method to determine if there were trends in farm infectiousness is the fitting of mechanistic mathematical models to the epidemic data. The parameter values that are estimated using this technique, however, may be influenced by missing and inaccurate data. In particular to the UK 2001 epidemic, this includes unreported infectives, inaccurate farm infection dates and unknown farm latent periods. Here, we show that such data degradation prevents successful determination of trends in farm infectiousness.
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Savill et al. (2006) studied Foot-and-mouth disease (n=2,026). Data degradation (missing infections, inaccurate dates, unknown latent periods) vs. Accurate epidemic data was evaluated on Estimates of farm infectiousness trends (parameters r and m). Missing and inaccurate epidemic data, such as unreported infectives and inaccurate infection dates, prevent the successful determination of trends in farm infectiousness.
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