SWINE

Porcine coronavirus update  

Jim Fairles

There has been considerable activity in PEDV testing over the winter months, and we hope that spring and summer will once again aid in the reduction of virus in the province.

AHL recognizes all of the organizations that are contributing to the reduction and elimination of PEDV in Ontario particularly Ontario Swine Health Advisory Board, Ontario Pork, and the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs.

Current statistics (available courtesy of OMAFRA at www.ontario.ca/swine) indicate to date, 17 premises with an initial clinical diagnosis since the fall of 2014. The great reduction in cases from the initial outbreaks last winter, we hope is related to the fine work the industry is doing in biosecurity.

The AHL encourages veterinarians to submit samples from any cases of undifferentiated diarrhea. (see Labnote 30 - http://www.guelphlabservices.com/AHL/LabNotes.aspx)

To aid in biosecurity, we recommend that the triplex porcine coronavirus PCR for PEDV, TGEV, PDCoV (deltacoronavirus) be done BEFORE submitting animals to the lab for postmortem where diarrhea is a clinical sign and coronavirus is suspected - the triplex PCR test will continue to be done at no cost to clients as part of OMAFRA/AHL disease surveillance for the initial clinical diagnosis (Ontario submissions only).

Some statistics on initial clinical diagnosis cases are listed below. These have been funded by the Disease Surveillance Program – money allocated by OMAFRA from federal Growing Forward 2 money to the AHL for work in disease surveillance. http://www.uoguelph.ca/omafra_partnership/en/partnershipprograms/DiseaseSurveillancePlanDSP.asp

and www.oahn.ca

nitial clinical diagnosis statistics

Total number of case accessions since the outbreak began – 1037 cases.  Total number of samples tested – 6,121