Increased Incidence of PRRS and PED Attributed to Labor Shortages

The Associate Director of the Swine Health Information Center suggests increased incidents of PRRS and PED over the past month could be due to the sharing of staff among production sites to deal with labor shortages. As part of its monthly enewsletter the Swine Health Information Center has released its May domestic and global swine disease surveillance reports.

SHIC Associate Director Dr. Megan Niederwerder reports there have been increased incidents of both Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome and Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea.

Clip-Dr. Megan Niederwerder-Swine Health Information Center:

Over the last month we have seen a PRRS increase regionally in the states of Nebraska, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri. We have seen that the overall PRRS prevalence is similar but, indeed, these regional increases have continued to occur.

We've also noticed that over the first quarter of this year or in the last report, essentially from January through March, there's been a higher prevalence of PRRS than previous years in the first quarter.

As well as PRRS, we've also seen this continued increase with Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus or PEDv and a few of the highlights in the report go back to saying perhaps some of these increases in viral disease outbreaks could be associated with continued labor shortages on the farm and subsequently sharing personnel across finishing sites or across sites due to that labor shortage.

So, we're again trying to emphasize those concepts of biosecurity and biocontainment as we continue to see these both regional increases in PRRS but also an overall year to year increase in this first quarter if the year.