The Manager of Swine Health Programs with Manitoba Pork is hopeful the reduced number of Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea cases so far this year will carry through the winter and into next spring. Since February 2014, when Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea was first identified in Manitoba, case numbers have varied considerably.
Jenelle Hamblin, the Manager of Swine Health Programs with Manitoba Pork, recalls there were four cases in 2014, one in 2015, five in 2016, 80 in 2017, 17 in 2018, 82 last year but just three so far this year.
Clip-Jenelle Hamblin-Manitoba Pork:
We've had a highly reduced number of cases this year which can be attributed to many factors, increased biosecurity, reduced traffic in the spring months due to COVID and perhaps some lingering immunity from 2019. I hope that these factors that have taken us this far into 2020 will continue through the winter months.
The fact that we've had a very significantly lower number of cases here in 2020 compared to 2019, that does a huge number on reducing the viral load in the province. That will come into effect through the winter especially but I wouldn't want anybody to let down their guard when it comes to the spring, especially with this pattern that we have seen in the past of even and odd years where our odd years seem to be where we get larger outbreaks.
I'm optimistic that, with a lower case number this year and the heightened measures that we've seen throughout the sector that we can limit the numbers we see throughout the winter and then into 2021. But I do think that we need to continue to keep our guard up and work hard to prevent this virus from coming onto our farms.
Source : Farmscape