Item 3 Pathogenicity and transmission

• No laboratory in the World has the resources immediately available to deal with a major epidemic. Contingency plans should be developed so that testing capacity can be scaled up as quickly as possible.

• It remains controversial whether the peak of the UK epidemic had already been passed before novel control measures were introduced. A fuller analysis of the data is awaited.

Recommendations

• Further steps should be taken to encourage the submission of samples to WRL so as to give a fuller picture of the world situation.

• Vaccine manufacturers and the WRL should collaborate closely to ensure that antigenic characterisations of field viruses includes comparisons with all available vaccine strains.

• High throughput laboratory vırus detection tests and field tests should be developed and validated with high priority.

Item 2a: FMD control: epidemiology, surveillance, control measures: focus on endemic zones

Under this item six papers were presented, the first dealt with SVD in Italy while 5 of the papers reviewed the FMD situation and control measures in the Middle East, Turkey and Israel.

Dr Franco De Simone dealt with the SVD epidemiology and diagnosis in Italy where the disease is endemic in southern regions (Appendix 7). In the last 6 months a zoo-epidemic situation occurred. A total of 166 outbreaks were reported lasting from February to July. These recent outbreaks were characterised by lack of clinical signs as observed also during the past years. This forms a serious obstacle for field diagnosis and makes clinical examination useless. He showed that the most reliable virological test is the Immune-PCR performed on faeces suspension. The antigenic profile of virus isolates from this epidemic performed by monoclonal antibodies was comparable. This profile was comparable to the fourth chronological antigenic type that appeared in 1992 and remained unchanged during the last decade.

The first paper regarding FMD in Turkey, presented by Dr Nilay Ünal reviewed the outbreaks during 2002 (Appendix 8). Three serotypes O1 Manisa, A Aydin98 and Asia 1 were circulating in 2002. No outbreaks due to Asia1 have been notified since April 2002. In general, the number of outbreaks (29) decreased in comparison to previous years and no outbreaks have been notified in the Thrace region since June 2001. Trivalent vaccine produced by the Sap Institute was used for the routine bi-annual vaccination. In addition, in the Thrace region, trivalent vaccine provided by EUFMD was used and a serological survey was carried out. Vaccination rate in the Thrace region gained 97% for cattle and 73% for small ruminants.

Regarding vaccine production at the SAP Institute, production systems and technology were improved and 22 million monovalent vaccine doses were produced in 2002. Studies for