2021 HPAI H5 outbreak in South Africa

The outbreak

An outbreak of highly pathogenic H5 avian influenza (HPAI) was reported in early April 2021. It was first detected in a commercial poultry establishment in Gauteng. It follows an HPAI H5N8 outbreak which started in 2017, but which has been sporadic since mid 2018 with the last officially reported case currently Nov 2020 (please go to this website to view more information on the 2017 H5N8 event.)

The event has been resolved on the 26 April 2023 and 27 Feb 2023 for domestic and wildbirds respectively, with the last case date occuring on the 6 Jan 2021 and 1 Dec 2022 for domestic and wildbirds respectively.

Summary overview

Below is a brief summary of the available data that is used in this analysis

Data sources

South Africa is a member of the OIE and as such is required to submit reports on outbreaks of certain diseases. The current HPAI outbreak falls within that category and the analysis presented here makes use of this reported data. In this analysis the unit of interest is each individual outbreak that has been reported: this relates to each location where HPAI has been detected during this outbreak. There is a poultry distribution layer in the spatial anlaysis section. This is based on data published online as part of a project that mapped livestock distributions globally. It does seem as if some provinces could not be as accurately determined as others however this data is what is available on a country level. The reference for this layer is:

Chickens distribution - Gridded Livestock of the World v 2.01 Robinson TP, Wint GRW, Conchedda G, Van Boeckel TP, Ercoli V, Palamara E, Cinardi G, D’Aietti L, Hay SI, and Gilbert M. (2014) Mapping the Global Distribution of Livestock. PLoS ONE 9(5):e96084.

The weblink to the article can be found here

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Run analysis

Epidemic curves allow the analysis of outbreaks in time - i.e. a temporal analysis of data. While the output of an epidemic curve is relatively straightforward, the benefit of such analysis allows the determination of:
  • Establishing the probability of the detection of the actual first case in the outbreak
  • Establishing the rate of progression and temporal trends of the outbreak
  • Identifying the secondary/progressive spread of infection
  • Establishing the impact of control measures

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Click on an affected area for more information

Spatial analysis of outbreaks allows the determination of how an outbreak spreads and the impact it has on specific areas. The reporting of HPAI outbreaks by South Africa is limited to Municipality area, and that is how the analysis is performed.

In the map there are two outputs that assist in spatial analysis:
  • The number of outbreaks reported per municipality (density of outbreak)
  • The week of the outbreak (starting at week 1) that any affected municipality was first affected, which shows how spread has taken place
The LAYERS button on the top right of the map allows layers to be toggled on and off. The Municipal and Provincial boundaries have also been included to assist analysis. Legends for the layers are shown below the map.