Emergency Response to Disease Outbreaks

While delivering its programme of veterinary research, surveillance and laboratory services, VLA maintains a constant state of readiness to support Defra and the livestock sector in the event of a disease outbreak.

When required, we provide services at three levels:

• in the field,
• at the policy centre, and
• through the provision of laboratory services.

Veterinary and technical staff can be quickly deployed to local or national disease control centres. Our disease specialists and epidemiologists also provide input to the various expert groups, such as the National Disease Committee and National Emergency Epidemiology Group, which advise the Chief Veterinary Officer’s policy team. Laboratory testing teams working in our specialist facilities provide a capability to quickly turnaround large numbers of tests.

National Reference Laboratories

Outbreaks of exotic disease can generate unprecedented volumes of laboratory tests. Initially suspected cases of disease and ‘tracings’ must be tested, as a matter of utmost urgency, to confirm the disease and determine the possible source of infection.

Epidemiological surveys are then required to determine the extent of the spread of infection and the success of control measures.

And, finally, extensive surveys may be necessary to support claims of freedom from infection before restrictions on trade can be lifted. All of the required testing falls to the NRL for the disease in question. Of the notifiable diseases which are considered to be the greatest risk to the UK, the VLA is the nominated NRL for:

• Classical swine fever
• Rabies
• Avian influenza
• Newcastle disease.

The Pirbright laboratory of the Institute for Animal Health (IAH) is the NRL for other high risk diseases including FMD and bluetongue. VLA and IAH Pirbright, although located 10-miles apart, work closely together, coordinating their activities and pooling resources where necessary.

A joint disease emergency response committee brings together the four key organisations involved in controlling outbreaks of disease in livestock - VLA, IAH Pirbright, Defra and Animal Health. The committee, led by VLA, meets regularly to oversee contingency planning and, during an outbreak, coordinates laboratory operations.

Avian Influenza

This year saw three outbreaks of notifiable avian influenza:

• Low pathogenic H7N2 virus affecting backyard poultry in Conwy, North Wales and Merseyside during May 2007.
• Highly pathogenic H5N1 virus in a free-range poultry premises in Diss, Suffolk in November 2007.
• Highly pathogenic H5N1 virus in wild mute swans in Dorset in January 2008.

These incidents resulted in massive surges in test volumes and over 30,000 PCR tests for AI were carried out over the course of the year. During the Suffolk outbreak, we tested around 12,100 poultry samples by PCR over a 15-day period, achieving an average turnaround time of 1.3 days.

Foot and Mouth Disease

Summer 2007 brought an outbreak of FMD in Surrey. For the first time our recently built containment level 4 laboratories were used to provide laboratory support to the NRL at the IAH Pirbright.

Following the 2001 outbreak we built a unique capability into our new laboratory facilities which were in the planning stages at the time. This enables our SAPO containment level 2 laboratories to be quickly switched over to a SAPO containment level 4 facility in response to a disease emergency.

These laboratories are fitted with a high level of automated and robot sample processing equipment, which enables rapid large scale testing. We are also able to deploy trained staff into dedicated workgroups to cope with the high volume. Serosurveillance for FMD generated over 30,000 tests during September and October.

Bluetongue