Analysis of spatio-temporal patterns of African swine fever cases in Russian wild boar does not reveal an endemic situation

African swine fever (ASF) is a highly lethal viral disease of domestic pigs and wild boar. ASF was introduced into the southern Russian Federation in 2007 and is now reported to be spreading in populations of wild and domestic suids. An endemic situation in the local wild boar population would significantly complicate management of the disease in the livestock population. To date no sound method exists for identifying the characteristic pattern of an endemic situation, which describes infection persisting from generation to generation in the same population. To support urgent management decisions at the wildlife-livestock interface, a new algorithm was constructed to test the hypothesis of an endemic disease situation in wildlife on the basis of case reports. The approach described here uses spatial and temporal associations between observed diagnostic data to discriminate between endemic and non-endemic patterns of case occurrence. The algorithm was validated with data from an epidemiological simulation model and applied to ASF case data from southern Russia. Based on the algorithm and the diagnostic data available, the null hypothesis of an endemic situation of ASF in wild boar of the region was rejected.