Case presentation
Case farm characteristics
Recently, a case of PEDV infection occurred in a pig farm in Jiangxi.
There were 8082 sows on hand in the mating house of the pig farm, which
were divided into 10 groups, with 800 pigs in each group. There were 902
sows in the farrowing house, with 80 farrowing beds as a unit and five
units constituting a building. Before the onset of the disease, the farm
recorded 25 weaned piglets per sow per year, and the loss of farrowing
house was 8%. Loss from conservation and fattening was less than 6%.
The pig farm regularly tested for enteric pathogens, and TGEV/PDCOV and
PEDV had not occurred in the last two years. There had often been
sporadic cases of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS)
on the pig farm.
Routinely used immunization regimens include vaccination of sows with
live PRRS vaccine, swine fever vaccine, live pseudorabies vaccine,
foot-and-mouth disease O+A vaccine, Japanese encephalitis vaccine and
parvovirus vaccine. Sows were immunized with a live PED vaccine and an
inactivated vaccine at 30 days before delivery and 14 days before
delivery, respectively.
Clinical presentation and interventions
On October 28, 2020, at first, 80% of the sows in a farrowing unit
developed depression, fatigue, and anorexia. Three days later, they
developed mushy persistent diarrhea. The body temperature was normal or
slightly higher, they showed anorexia and had fully recovered about 7
days after onset. Piglets presented with epidemic diseases with watery
diarrhea and vomiting as the main clinical symptoms. Vomiting usually
occurred after eating or feeding on breast milk. The severity of
symptoms varied with age. The younger the age, the more severe the
symptoms. In a period of 1 to 3 days after newborn piglets within 7 days
of age developed diarrhea, they were severely dehydrated and died, with
a mortality rate of 90% to 100%. Diarrhea occurred successively in
sows in other units 5 days later. After on-site anatomy and laboratory
testing of feces and tissues, PEDV was determined to be the pathogen
underlying this epidemic. Therefore, on October 31, the staff closed the
pigsty where diarrhea occurred, treated the sows and piglets with
amoxicillin- or lincomycin-containing drinking water for health care,
and disinfected the pigsty with Denaishuang dry powder and kept it dry;
on November 7, intramuscular injection of autogenous vaccine was
administered; on November 11, the farrowing house was disinfected, the
pigsty was dried and decontaminated with hot water at 60℃, the sick pigs
were given salt solution for replenishment, and the farrowing house was
cleaned, disinfected, and dried; on November 13, weaned piglets with
secondary infection were treated with antibiotics. On November 16th, the
sow swinery of the mating house was restored, the personnel were
released from lockdown, and the empty swinery units were cleaned and
disinfected. After adopting a series of comprehensive prevention and
control measures such as emergency vaccination with autogenous vaccine,
the mortality rate of newborn piglets on the farrowing room of this farm
dropped significantly at half a month after vaccination, and production
gradually returned to stable (Figure 1).
In general, four farrowing units showed clinical symptoms of PED, and
the mortality rate of suckling piglets was 40%. A total of 85 sows
died, and 187 litters had abortion, with an incidence rate of 30%. A
total of 6,455 piglets died, with an incidence rate of 70%. At the
current price, the net profit per pig was 300 US dollars, and the direct
loss was nearly 2 million US dollars. Some weaned piglets also
experienced diarrhea, weight loss, and growth retardation. The total
loss from piglet feeding was 12%. In the fattening house, there was no
sign of PED.
Epidemiological investigations revealed that at half a month before the
outbreak of PED, PEDV broke out in another pig farm 800 meters away from
the farm.