The impact of potential mitigation strategies on the predicted spread of foot and mouth disease in white-tailed deer in south Texas.

The United States has been free of FMD since the 1920s. Faced with an incursion of FMD virus that might involve wildlife species, it is crucial that appropriate mitigation strategies be applied rapidly to control the disease. Disease spread models can be used to evaluate the design of optimal strategies. Using a previously developed susceptible-infected-recovered geographic automata model (Sirca) to simulate the spread of FMD through white-tailed deer populations in south Texas, we conducted a series of experiments to determine how pre-emptive mitigation strategies applied to white-tailed deer populations might impact the predicted magnitude and distribution of outbreaks following FMD virus incursion. Based on previously derived deer distributions in the two ecoregions found within the study area, simulated outbreaks were evaluated by comparing the median number of deer predicted to be infected and the median area predicted affected for a baseline scenario and 3 mitigation strategies: targeted cull, random cull and targeted depopulation buffer. Substantial differences were observed in the predicted magnitude of outbreaks both by mitigation strategy and by ecoregion: depending on the ecoregion, the creation of a targeted depopulation buffer could reduce the number of deer predicted infected by up to 52%, and the area affected by up to 31%. Results suggest that the outcome of an FMD incursion that involves wildlife species, such as white-tailed deer in south Texas, might depend on both where the incursion occurs and the type of pre-emptive mitigation strategy applied.