Insights gained through real-time monitoring of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus and description of temporal trends based on laboratory data in Ontario, Canada

Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV) is a prevalent pathogen that impacts the health of swine and is costly to the swine industry. This study utilized PRRSV test results from the University of Guelph's Animal Health Laboratory database to develop interactive, real-time dashboards and to monitor and investigate PRRSV data. The test results from Ontario swine herd samples submitted from January 2014 to July 2023 were processed in R v.4.1.1. The final optimized, aggregated, and anonymized datasets were exported to the Tableau server and were used to design dynamic real-time visualizations with Tableau Desktop v.2021.4. Constructed dashboards were: (1) monthly number of submissions and positive submissions over the last 10 years; (2) number of submissions and positive submissions over the last 3 years, interactively displayed at weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly intervals; (3) monthly number of PRRSV restriction fragment length polymorphism pattern (RFLP) types at the submission level over the last 5 years; (4) weekly number of tested farms and positive farms over the last 6 Years; (5) monthly number of tested farms and positive farms over the last 6 Years; (6) indicators of the epidemiological data quality in each month; and (7) contextual information. Eighty different PRRSV RFLP patterns were identified with the predominant patterns being 1-8-4, 1-1-1, 1-4-2, and 2-5-2. Most farms contributed one submission per week or per month for PRRSV testing (median: 1 submission per week; IQR: 0; max: 13; median: 1 submission per month; IQR: 1, max: 31). Epidemiological data quality showed considerable improvements over the 9 years of investigation. Apparent changes in trends of submissions were visually observed when time series were stratified by reasons for submission and production class.