Rapid identification and epidemiological analysis of OIE-notifiable viral animal diseases.

Outbreaks caused by OIE-notifiable animal diseases, such as avian influenza virus (AIV), bluetongue virus (BTV) and African Swine Fever (ASF), can have severe socio-economic consequences [1-3]. This requires a prompt and adequate response by the governing body for effective animal disease control, which largely depends on the rapid acquirement of information regarding the identification and origin of such viral pathogens. The existing infrastructure within Switzerland is not equipped to provide such information within a matter of days and thereby might negatively influence the response time. The establishment of the state-of-the-art Oxford Nanopore sequencing technology in conjunction with a powerful bioinformatic-based data analytic pipeline that can be projected in a user-friendly visualization tool will considerably aid in the rapid identification and epidemiological understanding of important viral pathogens and will improve the outbreak response time [4,5].