It is based on the premise that infection occurs naturally upon inflation of the swimbladder and the completion of the intestinal tract, at around 4 days post fertilization (dpf) (Kimmel et al., 1995; Pack et al., 1996).
Managers of horse premises that experienced infection in their horses in 2007 and those seeking infection control information from specific sources reported increased levels of perceived vulnerability to a future outbreak.
Animals were slaughtered if they were on infected premises, on farms neighboring infected premises, on premises with animals that had direct contact with infected animals, and if any infection was suspected.
This results in infection of premises that are potentially connected to different sub-networks (via other catching companies, slaughterhouses or poultry companies for example) in less than 1% of the simulations run.
The 32 explanatory variables investigated in this study are related to manager and premises description, sources of infection control information used during the outbreak, outbreak experience and perceptions concerning a potential future equine influenza outbreak (Table 1).
If a susceptible farm had multiple links from an infected premises, then each link was treated independently, and the probability of infection therefore increased.
Furthermore, it has been confirmed that increased or decreased acid secretion is restored following the eradication of H. pylori [ 24- 27], strongly supporting the premise that H. pylori infection alters the function of gastric acid secretion.
In addition to incorporating space by using the spatial transmission kernel, contiguous premises (CPs) (farm premises neighbouring infected premises which were at highly elevated risk of infection) were modelled by area-weighted tessellation in order to examine the likely effect of culling CPs [ 3, 5].
However, infection into large premises does not imply a large epidemic will occur.
It is reiterated however that this does not imply that infection seeded in large premises will always result in a large outbreak.
