Sydney School of Veterinary Science, Faculty of Science, The University of Sydney, Camden, New South Wales, Australia.
Département de pathologie et microbiologie, Faculté de médecine vétérinaire, Université de Montréal, Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec, Canada.
PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2021 Feb 12;15(2):e0009124. doi: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0009124. eCollection 2021 Feb.
Australia, home to the iconic dingo, is currently free from canine rabies. However northern Australia, including Indigenous communities with large free-roaming domestic dog populations, is at increased risk of rabies incursion from nearby Indonesia. We developed a novel agent-based stochastic spatial rabies spread model to evaluate the potential spread of rabies within the dingo population of the Northern Peninsula Area (NPA) region of northern Australia. The model incorporated spatio-temporal features specific to this host-environment system, including landscape heterogeneity, demographic fluctuations, dispersal movements and dingo ecological parameters-such as home range size and density-derived from NPA field studies. Rabies spread between dingo packs in nearly 60% of simulations. In such situations rabies would affect a median of 22 dingoes (approximately 14% of the population; 2.5-97.5 percentiles: 2-101 dingoes) within the study area which covered 1,131 km2, and spread 0.52 km/week for 191 days. Larger outbreaks occurred in scenarios in which an incursion was introduced during the dry season (vs. wet season), and close to communities (vs. areas with high risk of interaction between dingoes and hunting community dogs). Sensitivity analyses revealed that home range size and duration of infectious clinical period contributed most to the variance of outputs. Although conditions in the NPA would most likely not support a sustained propagation of the disease in the dingo population, due to the predicted number of infected dingoes following a rabies incursion and the proximity of Indigenous communities to dingo habitat, we conclude that the risk for human transmission could be substantial.
澳大利亚是标志性的野犬（dingo）的家园，目前没有犬类狂犬病。然而，包括拥有大量自由放养家犬的土著社区在内的澳大利亚北部地区，由于印度尼西亚附近的狂犬病入侵风险增加。我们开发了一种新的基于主体的随机空间狂犬病传播模型，以评估狂犬病在澳大利亚北部半岛地区（NPA）野犬种群中的潜在传播。该模型结合了该宿主-环境系统的时空特征，包括景观异质性、人口波动、扩散运动以及从 NPA 实地研究中得出的野犬生态参数，如栖息地范围大小和密度。在近 60%的模拟中，狂犬病在野犬群体之间传播。在这种情况下，狂犬病将影响研究区域内中位数为 22 只野犬（约占种群的 14%；2.5-97.5 百分位数：2-101 只野犬），研究区域覆盖 1131 平方公里，每周传播 0.52 公里，持续 191 天。在旱季（与雨季相比）和靠近社区（与野犬和狩猎社区犬之间互动风险较高的地区相比）发生入侵的情况下，会出现更大规模的暴发。敏感性分析表明，栖息地范围大小和传染性临床期的持续时间对输出结果的差异贡献最大。尽管 NPA 的条件不太可能支持狂犬病在野犬种群中持续传播，但由于狂犬病入侵后预计会有一定数量的野犬感染，以及土著社区与野犬栖息地的接近程度，我们得出结论，人类传播的风险可能很大。
