Atmospheric pathway: A possibility of continuous outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in South Korea in 2010–2011

• FMD outbreaks in the entire history of South Korea are briefly reviewed.
• A time-efficient approach to supply necessary info. for control of FMDV is proposed.
• Possibility of long-range transmission of airborne FMDV is revealed for a case study.
• Awareness to enhance prevention technologies can be raised from study results.
• Combined technologies using proposed method and Smartphone application is presented.

Severe occurrences of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in Korea during 2010–2011, which caused great economic loss and led to Korea’s exclusion from the list of nations deemed “FMD-free with vaccination,” have raised attempts to enhance existing prevention and control technologies. Atmospheric dispersion modeling, a scientific method which had never before been applied as a tool in a national FMD control program, was applied in this study to highlight its potential utility. In order to study the possibility of contagion from initial epidemic areas to remote places – a possible cause of continuous epidemics – two periods of disease outbreaks were selected (early 2010 and from late 2010 to early 2011). A combination of data related to contagious periods and locations as well as proper conditions for virus survival was considered for this investigation. Consequently, the possibility of outbreaks caused via atmospheric pathway onto areas having no/low surveillance measures was revealed for one of the case studies. There are numerous factors that can cause infection transmission to animals. Nonetheless, taking every reasonable precaution is vital to decrease risk of nationwide outbreaks. Though still in the state of development, a suggested approach is in predicting airborne virus dispersion in conjunction with a mobile application. This approach can be expected to provide considerable information towards prevention, including the predicted dispersion direction from outbreak sources in relation to time, which can also be used to coordinate with other control measures related to possible outbreaks in the future.