Ebola Virus

LEVELS: Highly unlikely; Severe; Routine biosecurity keeps it out; Reference or research laboratory required; Minor; Temporary disruption; Little; Available, or not needed


Register id	`ebola_virus`
Type	virus
Scientific name	Ebola virus
NCBI taxid	1570291
Evidence	3 document(s)
Assigned	2026-09-06, against criteria version `093366e352a2`

Overview

Ebola virus is on this register as a question rather than a disease, and the governing fact is that pigs have never been confirmed naturally infected with it anywhere. Antibodies have been detected in pigs in West Africa, but at very low rates — under 1% of 400 pigs in Sierra Leone, 4-6% in Guinea — and the pattern of reactivity does not support genuine infection, so the serology is more likely cross-reaction than evidence. No field infection of swine has ever been confirmed and no outbreak has been observed. Experimental work shows pigs can be infected and can transmit the virus, which is why the question was asked at all and why it is worth keeping an eye on, but nothing in the field record suggests pigs play any part in the epidemiology of Ebola. The disease in people needs no introduction: it is among the most lethal viral infections known, and it is acquired from bats and from other people, not from pigs. There is no swine vaccine and no reason to develop one. The entry exists so that the register's silence on Ebola is a recorded finding rather than an omission.

C1 Zoonotic potential

Likelihood of transmission from pigs to humans

Highly unlikely: Human infection with the agent has never been reported, or has been reported but is not attributed to pig or pork exposure

Basis. THE GOVERNING FACT FOR THIS ENTRY, and it decides five of the eight cells: PIGS HAVE NEVER BEEN CONFIRMED NATURALLY INFECTED WITH EBOLA VIRUS ANYWHERE. ch29 29.5.1: "FIELD INFECTIONS OF SWINE WITH EBOV HAVE NOT BEEN CONFIRMED, although EBOV antibodies have been detected in pigs." 29.5.5: "EBOV INFECTIONS HAVE NOT BEEN OBSERVED IN THE FIELD." cfsph_2022 tests the serology and finds it wanting: "recent serological studies, which found antibodies in <1% of 400 pigs in Sierra Leone and 4-6% of pigs in Guinea, DO NOT SEEM TO SUPPORT THIS HYPOTHESIS. The patterns of serological reactivity in many pigs DID NOT APPEAR TO BE CONSISTENT WITH THE VIRUSES CAUSING HUMAN OUTBREAKS, and most of the seropositive animals in the study from Guinea WERE BORN AFTER THE HUMAN EPIDEMIC." And: "Ebolaviruses were NOT DETECTED during very limited virus sampling of live cattle, sheep, goats and pigs during early outbreaks or, more recently, BY PCR IN PIGS or dogs." Everything known about EBOV in pigs comes from experimental inoculation. What the experiments show, ch29 29.5.1: "It has been shown that PIGS CAN BE INFECTED EXPERIMENTALLY and TRANSMIT THE VIRUS TO CO-HOUSED PIGS and NONHUMAN PRIMATES (Weingartl et al. 2012)." 29.3 states the concern as a concern: "SINCE PIGS ARE SUSCEPTIBLE TO EBOV INFECTION UNDER EXPERIMENTAL CONDITIONS and because RESTV was transmitted from pigs to humans during the 2008/2009 outbreak, THERE IS A CONCERN THAT EBOV COULD ALSO INFECT PIGS (both domestic and wild), and the pigs then serve as a source of infection for humans." No human case of Ebola virus disease has ever been attributed to a pig. shic_2024_ebola_reston: "Natural Ebola virus infection has not been described in pigs." "Clinical illness has not been reported in pigs; however, serosurveys indicate pigs in some parts of Africa have been exposed to Ebola virus." "Bats are thought to be the primary reservoir hosts."

How this level was decided

Level 1, and it is your chikungunya reasoning applied to the most alarming agent in the register. C1 was rescoped to transmission FROM PIGS, and there is none: no pig has ever been shown to be naturally infected, so no person has ever caught Ebola from one. The label -- "No evidence that pigs transmit the agent to humans" -- is exactly right. EXPERIMENTAL SUSCEPTIBILITY IS NOT NATURAL INFECTION, and you set that boundary yourself on chikungunya: "experimental infection has been confirmed but natural infection has not, so at this time we have no clinical or economic justification to rate any higher than L1." chikungunya_virus sits at C1 level 1 and C2 level 1 on exactly this. WHAT THE PASS IS DELIBERATELY NOT SCORING: pig-to-primate droplet transmission was demonstrated in a laboratory, and red river hog die-outs were reported around EBOV outbreak areas. Both are reasons to watch pigs, not evidence that pigs transmit to people. Level 1 confirmed. Pigs in Africa have been exposed, but no natural infection has been described and no human case is attributed to a pig -- the second L1 clause. Human Ebola outbreaks run from bats and from other people.

C2 Zoonotic impact

Severity of human illness caused by the agent

Severe: Infection carries a substantial risk of life-threatening illness, death, or permanent disability, even if human infections are uncommon

How this level was decided

RE-SCORED 2026-09-04. C2 now grades the severity of the illness the agent causes in a person, independent of how the person was exposed -- the 2026-09-01 pig-attribution reading is reversed, and C1 alone carries the source question. Returns to grading the agent. Ebola virus disease carries a substantial risk of death -- the previous C2 cell recorded that Ebola "killed eleven" thousand people in the West African epidemic while scoring level 1 on the pig-source reading.

PREVIOUS ANSWER, written under the pig-attribution reading: Level 1, and THIS IS THE CELL IN THE WHOLE REGISTER THAT MOST NEEDS THE LABEL TO SURVIVE BEING READ ALONE. It says "No human disease from pigs". IT DOES NOT SAY EBOLA IS MILD -- Ebola virus killed eleven thousand people in West Africa between 2013 and 2016, and the level 1 label is deliberately worded so that the sentence printed beside this entry is a statement about PIGS AS A SOURCE, not about the agent. This is exactly the case the C2 rescoping of 2026-09-01 was built for. Before that rescoping, C2 asked how bad the agent is in anyone who catches it from anywhere, and this entry would have scored level 4 -- carrying, because PAPRIKA adds the criteria, the full weight of a lethal human epidemic into the priority of a PIG disease programme, for an agent no pig has ever given to anyone. Your words then: "we are really talking about the pig to human route, if we think bigger than that I think we end up over-worrying a lot of agents." Eastern equine encephalitis, tetanus and botulism sit at level 1 for the same reason. IF THIS ENTRY IS EVER EXCERPTED INTO A SLIDE, the printed label must be the full one. Level 4 confirmed in one line.

C3 Herd introduction risk

Effort required to keep the agent out of the herd

Routine biosecurity keeps it out: Quarantine of incoming stock, transport and fomite control, cleaning and disinfection, and the usual monitoring reliably exclude it

CONFIRMED by Eric. The assignment reached this level from the evidence, and he has reviewed and ratified it.

Confirmed by Eric. CONFIRMED. "c3l3, if it were to occur in US, l3 measures would likely exclude"

Basis. THE GOVERNING FACT FOR THIS ENTRY, and it decides five of the eight cells: PIGS HAVE NEVER BEEN CONFIRMED NATURALLY INFECTED WITH EBOLA VIRUS ANYWHERE. ch29 29.5.1: "FIELD INFECTIONS OF SWINE WITH EBOV HAVE NOT BEEN CONFIRMED, although EBOV antibodies have been detected in pigs." 29.5.5: "EBOV INFECTIONS HAVE NOT BEEN OBSERVED IN THE FIELD." cfsph_2022 tests the serology and finds it wanting: "recent serological studies, which found antibodies in <1% of 400 pigs in Sierra Leone and 4-6% of pigs in Guinea, DO NOT SEEM TO SUPPORT THIS HYPOTHESIS. The patterns of serological reactivity in many pigs DID NOT APPEAR TO BE CONSISTENT WITH THE VIRUSES CAUSING HUMAN OUTBREAKS, and most of the seropositive animals in the study from Guinea WERE BORN AFTER THE HUMAN EPIDEMIC." And: "Ebolaviruses were NOT DETECTED during very limited virus sampling of live cattle, sheep, goats and pigs during early outbreaks or, more recently, BY PCR IN PIGS or dogs." Everything known about EBOV in pigs comes from experimental inoculation. On the reservoir, ch29 29.5.1: "SEVERAL SPECIES OF BATS ARE DISEASE-FREE EBOV RESERVOIRS", and outbreaks have been confined to Central and West Africa. On pig-to-pig spread once started: pigs "transmit the virus to CO-HOUSED PIGS and nonhuman primates... SHEDDING IN PIGS OCCURS PREDOMINANTLY VIA THE RESPIRATORY TRACT and infectious virus can be recovered from mucosal samples, nasal washes, and oral swabs. Transmission of the virus to nonhuman primates housed in cages in the same room as EBOV-infected pigs is thought to occur VIA DROPLETS." On whether it would sustain itself: "Subsequent shedding in contact piglets in the range of 1 x 10(1)-10(2) TCID50/mL RAISES THE QUESTION OF WHETHER VIRUS SPREAD IN SWINE HERDS COULD BE SELF-LIMITING." On environmental persistence: viable in blood for days, inactivated by 70% ethanol or 0.5% sodium hypochlorite "in minutes", and by heating to 60 degrees C for an hour. shic_2024_ebola_reston: "Keeping pigs indoors can reduce exposure to bats, the suspected reservoir species. Biosecurity plans should consider contact with other hosts, such as infected humans and fomites." "Filoviruses may be found in semen for months after recovery in humans; this may also occur in pigs, potentially affecting breeding or artificial insemination procedures."

How this level was decided

INFERRED. Level 3, by the bat rule as applied to Hendra and Nipah, both of which sit here. The reservoir is African bats, which are not on this continent, so an incursion would bring the virus and not its ecosystem; C3 is scored on what the onward source in a US herd would be, which is other pigs by droplet and direct contact. Housing does not close that route, so it is not level 2; and nothing suggests filtration, thermally treated feed or costly carrier testing would be needed, so it is not level 4. Routine quarantine, fomite control and C&D address a respiratory agent that chlorine kills in minutes. NOTE THE HONEST WEAKNESS: there is no natural route into a pig herd on record anywhere, so this level describes what would contain the agent once inside rather than what has ever had to be excluded. Level 3 is scored rather than left null because the criterion asks about effort to exclude and the folder does establish the route between pigs, the shedding site and the disinfectant susceptibility. Level 3 held, and the factsheet is unusually explicit about why it is not level 2. Housing does close the bat route -- it says so -- but the same paragraph names two routes housing does not close, infected humans and fomites, plus prolonged semen shedding that would reach a herd through AI. Those are the routine biosecurity list.

C4 Detection difficulty

Difficulty of recognizing and confirming infection

Reference or research laboratory required: A validated assay exists, but only at a national reference or research laboratory rather than at local or regional level

Basis. THE GOVERNING FACT FOR THIS ENTRY, and it decides five of the eight cells: PIGS HAVE NEVER BEEN CONFIRMED NATURALLY INFECTED WITH EBOLA VIRUS ANYWHERE. ch29 29.5.1: "FIELD INFECTIONS OF SWINE WITH EBOV HAVE NOT BEEN CONFIRMED, although EBOV antibodies have been detected in pigs." 29.5.5: "EBOV INFECTIONS HAVE NOT BEEN OBSERVED IN THE FIELD." cfsph_2022 tests the serology and finds it wanting: "recent serological studies, which found antibodies in <1% of 400 pigs in Sierra Leone and 4-6% of pigs in Guinea, DO NOT SEEM TO SUPPORT THIS HYPOTHESIS. The patterns of serological reactivity in many pigs DID NOT APPEAR TO BE CONSISTENT WITH THE VIRUSES CAUSING HUMAN OUTBREAKS, and most of the seropositive animals in the study from Guinea WERE BORN AFTER THE HUMAN EPIDEMIC." And: "Ebolaviruses were NOT DETECTED during very limited virus sampling of live cattle, sheep, goats and pigs during early outbreaks or, more recently, BY PCR IN PIGS or dogs." Everything known about EBOV in pigs comes from experimental inoculation. ch29 29.5.3: "Since EBOV infections of swine CAN RESEMBLE OTHER RESPIRATORY DISEASES, DIAGNOSIS REQUIRES LABORATORY TESTING. Virus detection by virus isolation is definitive, BUT DIAGNOSTIC WORK INVOLVING LIVE EBOV IS RESTRICTED TO BSL-4 LABORATORIES... Viral RNA and antigen detection MAY BE PERFORMED ON INACTIVATED SAMPLES UNDER LOWER BIOSAFETY CONDITIONS. VIRAL RNA IN SAMPLES CAN BE DETECTED USING REAL-TIME RT-PCR VALIDATED FOR SWINE SAMPLES (Pickering et al. 2018)... Under lower biosafety conditions, AN INDIRECT IgG ELISA designed to detect antibodies against recombinant NP HAS BEEN VALIDATED FOR SWINE SERUM SAMPLES heat inactivated at 60 degrees C for 1 hour. Confirmatory testing to exclude false positive reactors can be done either by immunoblot... or, UNDER BSL-4 LABORATORY CONDITIONS, by mPRNT." On the presentation, 29.5.2: "LABORED BREATHING WITH A STRONG ABDOMINAL COMPONENT MAY RESEMBLE OTHER RESPIRATORY DISEASES OF SWINE, SUCH AS INFECTIONS WITH INFLUENZA A VIRUS OR PRRSV." shic_2024_ebola_reston: tests used in experimentally infected pigs are "reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), virus isolation, immunohistochemistry, virus neutralization, and IgM and IgG enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs)."

How this level was decided

Level 3, and it is better evidenced than the same cell on Reston virus. The presentation points nowhere -- the chapter says it looks like influenza or PRRS -- so this is not level 1 or 2 on clinical grounds. A VALIDATED ASSAY EXISTS AND THE CHAPTER USES THAT WORD TWICE: real-time RT-PCR validated for swine samples, and an indirect IgG ELISA validated for swine serum. WHERE IT CAN BE RUN IS THE LEVEL: isolation and confirmatory neutralisation are BSL-4, which in the US means a national reference laboratory rather than a regional one. That is the level 3 label, and it is the same structural answer as classical swine fever, foot-and-mouth disease and African swine fever. Level 3 confirmed. Validated assays exist and have been applied to pig samples, so not level 4; they are BSL4 reference-laboratory work, which is level 3.

C5 Production cost

Financial impact on the infected farm's cost of production

Minor: Small and generally short-lived losses with little effect on overall cost of production

Corrected by Eric from no level assigned. Reason: "c5l2, experimental work and field evidence suggest pigs can be infected but there is little evidence it causes more than minor disease"

Basis. THE GOVERNING FACT FOR THIS ENTRY, and it decides five of the eight cells: PIGS HAVE NEVER BEEN CONFIRMED NATURALLY INFECTED WITH EBOLA VIRUS ANYWHERE. ch29 29.5.1: "FIELD INFECTIONS OF SWINE WITH EBOV HAVE NOT BEEN CONFIRMED, although EBOV antibodies have been detected in pigs." 29.5.5: "EBOV INFECTIONS HAVE NOT BEEN OBSERVED IN THE FIELD." cfsph_2022 tests the serology and finds it wanting: "recent serological studies, which found antibodies in <1% of 400 pigs in Sierra Leone and 4-6% of pigs in Guinea, DO NOT SEEM TO SUPPORT THIS HYPOTHESIS. The patterns of serological reactivity in many pigs DID NOT APPEAR TO BE CONSISTENT WITH THE VIRUSES CAUSING HUMAN OUTBREAKS, and most of the seropositive animals in the study from Guinea WERE BORN AFTER THE HUMAN EPIDEMIC." And: "Ebolaviruses were NOT DETECTED during very limited virus sampling of live cattle, sheep, goats and pigs during early outbreaks or, more recently, BY PCR IN PIGS or dogs." Everything known about EBOV in pigs comes from experimental inoculation. What the experiments give, ch29 29.5.2: four- to six-week-old pigs inoculated oronasally "developed clinical disease characterized by LABORED BREATHING, RELUCTANCE TO MOVE, AND HIGH RECTAL TEMPERATURE... Infection in pigs CAN BE INAPPARENT OR RANGE IN THE SEVERITY OF RESPIRATORY CLINICAL SIGNS." And then the authors decline to draw the conclusion this criterion needs: "DUE TO THE LOW NUMBER AND NARROW AGE SPAN OF THE ANIMALS INOCULATED EXPERIMENTALLY, IT IS DIFFICULT TO COMMENT ON MORBIDITY AND MORTALITY RATES, but it appears that both CAN BE LOW in comparison to nonhuman primates, AS RECOVERY WAS OBSERVED early post inoculation in younger animals which were not euthanized." Gross lesions were confined to the lungs. shic_2024_ebola_reston: "Natural Ebola virus infection has not been described in pigs. In experimental studies, respiratory disease varied from mild to severe." "Clinical illness has not been reported in pigs."

How this level was decided

NOT ASSESSED. C5 asks what this agent costs an infected farm, and NO FARM HAS EVER BEEN INFECTED -- there is not one natural case anywhere in the world to reason from, only a handful of experimentally inoculated piglets in a narrow age band whose own authors say the numbers will not support a morbidity or mortality estimate. TWO OF YOUR OWN RULES CONVERGE HERE. Menangle, 2026-09: "a level is a claim about the general case, and ONE OUTBREAK CANNOT SUPPORT THE GENERAL CASE however bad that outbreak was" -- and here there are zero outbreaks. PCV4 and pasivirus, 2026-08/09: where the folder cannot support a claim, the cell stays empty, because a filled-in level is indistinguishable from a real one. IT IS TEMPTING TO SCORE LEVEL 1 off "both can be low" and "recovery was observed", and that is the reading to resist -- it is the same move you overruled on porcine norovirus's neighbours, where healthy-pig findings were offered as proof of no cost. Level 1 is as much a magnitude claim as level 4. THIS NULL MAKES THE ENTRY UNEXPORTABLE, which is the intended outcome and is what the KISS route is for. LEVEL 2 ON ERIC'S RULING of 2026-09-03, "c5l2, experimental work and field evidence suggest pigs can be infected but there is little evidence it causes more than minor disease", and the SHIC factsheet is consistent with it: no natural infection has been described, and the experimental respiratory disease ranged from mild to severe. CORRECTION TO THIS PASS, 2026-09-06: the re-assessment first described this cell as null, which was an error of method rather than of judgment -- I read the level stored in the assignment file instead of the level after his correction is applied. The stored value is null; the answer is 2.

C6 Market impact

Duration of material disruption to pork and pig markets

Temporary disruption: Material negative effect on supply or demand lasting less than a month when disease occurs on one or more farms

Corrected by Eric from no level assigned. Reason: CORRECTED TO LEVEL 2 AFTER THE CELL WAS HELD AND RETURNED. The pass did not apply his first marking because his level and his reasoning disagreed: he wrote "c6l1... there would certainly be a regulatory action but I SUSPECT LESS THAN 1 MONTH", and "lasting less than a month" is the level 2 label word for word. It also read backwards against his own Reston virus ruling in the same sitting, where he chose level 2 because "as with other members of this group, they are high profile and there would be regulatory involvement for a period of time". HIS RULING ON BEING ASKED, 2026-09-03: "C6 SHOULD BE L2 FOR ALL THE FILOVIRUSES - ALL ARE HIGH PROFILE AND WOULD PROMPT A RESPONSE." So the second reading was the intended one, and it is now a rule for the genus rather than a judgment on one entry: ebola_virus and reston_virus both sit at level 2, and any filovirus added to the register later starts there. NOTE WHAT THIS SETTLES ABOUT THE STANDING NOTE SCORING/market_impact, because ebola_virus C6 had been left NULL by the pass on the ground that pigs have never been naturally infected anywhere, so no precedent of any kind exists -- the same ruling he made on hendra_virus. He has overridden that here and supplied the missing observation himself, which is the legitimate way such a cell gets filled: the judgment is his and is recorded as his. The distinguishing fact he is relying on is profile rather than epidemiology.

Basis. THE GOVERNING FACT FOR THIS ENTRY, and it decides five of the eight cells: PIGS HAVE NEVER BEEN CONFIRMED NATURALLY INFECTED WITH EBOLA VIRUS ANYWHERE. ch29 29.5.1: "FIELD INFECTIONS OF SWINE WITH EBOV HAVE NOT BEEN CONFIRMED, although EBOV antibodies have been detected in pigs." 29.5.5: "EBOV INFECTIONS HAVE NOT BEEN OBSERVED IN THE FIELD." cfsph_2022 tests the serology and finds it wanting: "recent serological studies, which found antibodies in <1% of 400 pigs in Sierra Leone and 4-6% of pigs in Guinea, DO NOT SEEM TO SUPPORT THIS HYPOTHESIS. The patterns of serological reactivity in many pigs DID NOT APPEAR TO BE CONSISTENT WITH THE VIRUSES CAUSING HUMAN OUTBREAKS, and most of the seropositive animals in the study from Guinea WERE BORN AFTER THE HUMAN EPIDEMIC." And: "Ebolaviruses were NOT DETECTED during very limited virus sampling of live cattle, sheep, goats and pigs during early outbreaks or, more recently, BY PCR IN PIGS or dogs." Everything known about EBOV in pigs comes from experimental inoculation. ch29 29.5.5, the whole of what the chapter says about the response: "EBOV infections have not been observed in the field. IF SUCH WERE TO OCCUR, THE RISK TO HUMAN HEALTH WOULD JUSTIFY A RAPID AND DECISIVE REGULATORY RESPONSE." cfsph_2022: "ANIMALS INFECTED WITH AFRICAN FILOVIRUSES ARE USUALLY EUTHANIZED to keep these viruses from spreading to humans." No market or trade consequence of EBOV in pigs is recorded anywhere, because the event has never happened anywhere. shic_2024_ebola_reston: "Ebola virus infection is not a World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH)-listed disease... There are no restrictions for the importation of animals from countries or zones affected by ebolaviruses. Similarly, Ebola virus and Reston virus are not notifiable to the U.S. Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS)."

How this level was decided

NOT ASSESSED, and this follows the standing note SCORING/market_impact rather than departing from it. The note reserves a null for the case where NOTHING HAS EVER BEEN OBSERVED: "the test is not whether the agent is exotic -- it is whether anything has ever been observed... Where none exists and the event would be conspicuous, leave the cell unassessed rather than asserting that nothing would happen." Ebola virus in pigs has never been observed in any country, so there is no precedent of any kind, foreign or domestic. THIS IS THE SAME RULING YOU MADE ON HENDRA, and in the same words: "I don't think we have enough info to assess. THIS IS A CASE WHERE WE HAVE ENOUGH EVIDENCE FOR SOME CRITERIA, BUT NOT FOR OTHERS." Hendra, Ross River, dengue and Murray Valley encephalitis are all nulled here for this reason. NOTE THE DIRECTION OF THE ERROR BEING AVOIDED, because it is the opposite of those four: on them the pass wanted to say level 1 and you said we do not know. Here the pass would want to say level 4 -- "Ebola in American pigs" is as conspicuous as an animal health event gets -- and the discipline is the same. The chapter will say only that the response would be "rapid and decisive"; it will not say for how long, and the criterion is measured in months. [HELD ON 2026-09-03, NOT APPLIED, AND RETURNED TO YOU -- your level and your reasoning disagree and the rule is to hold and ask rather than guess. You wrote "C6L1, THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE DISEASE GLOBALLY MEANS THAT IF THERE WERE A DIAGNOSIS IN US PIGS, THERE WOULD CERTAINLY BE A REGULATORY ACTION BUT I SUSPECT LESS THAN 1 MONTH." The phrase "less than 1 month" is the LEVEL 2 label word for word -- "Temporary disruption: Material negative effect on supply or demand LASTING LESS THAN A MONTH". Level 1 is "Negligible: LITTLE OR NO material disruption". THE SECOND REASON FOR HOLDING IT is that you put RESTON VIRUS at level 2 in the same sitting, saying "as with other members of this group, they are high profile and there would be regulatory involvement for a period of time" -- and Ebola is the more high-profile of the two by a wide margin, so level 1 here and level 2 there reads backwards. TWO READINGS ARE BOTH SENSIBLE AND I WILL NOT CHOOSE: either you mean a regulatory response occurs but produces no material market disruption, which is level 1; or you mean a real disruption that resolves inside a month, which is level 2 and would match Reston. Tell me which and it is written.] LEVEL 2 ON ERIC'S RULING of 2026-09-03. He wrote "there would certainly be a regulatory action but I SUSPECT LESS THAN 1 MONTH", which is the level 2 label word for word, and it matches his Reston ruling in the same sitting. The new factsheet does not disturb it: no WOAH listing, no import restriction and no APHIS notifiability, but a filovirus in a pig would draw a short regulatory response. CORRECTION TO THIS PASS, 2026-09-06: the re-assessment first described this cell as null and reasoned that no market had ever had the chance to react. That was wrong on the facts of the file -- I read the stored level rather than the resolved one.

C7 Treatment potential

Potential for treatment to improve outcomes

Little: Effective pathogen-directed treatment is available and works, or animals recover acceptably without it

CONFIRMED by Eric. The assignment reached this level from the evidence, and he has reviewed and ratified it.

Confirmed by Eric. CONFIRMED. "c7l1, little clincial or market imperative to develop a treatment for pigs"

Basis. THE GOVERNING FACT FOR THIS ENTRY, and it decides five of the eight cells: PIGS HAVE NEVER BEEN CONFIRMED NATURALLY INFECTED WITH EBOLA VIRUS ANYWHERE. ch29 29.5.1: "FIELD INFECTIONS OF SWINE WITH EBOV HAVE NOT BEEN CONFIRMED, although EBOV antibodies have been detected in pigs." 29.5.5: "EBOV INFECTIONS HAVE NOT BEEN OBSERVED IN THE FIELD." cfsph_2022 tests the serology and finds it wanting: "recent serological studies, which found antibodies in <1% of 400 pigs in Sierra Leone and 4-6% of pigs in Guinea, DO NOT SEEM TO SUPPORT THIS HYPOTHESIS. The patterns of serological reactivity in many pigs DID NOT APPEAR TO BE CONSISTENT WITH THE VIRUSES CAUSING HUMAN OUTBREAKS, and most of the seropositive animals in the study from Guinea WERE BORN AFTER THE HUMAN EPIDEMIC." And: "Ebolaviruses were NOT DETECTED during very limited virus sampling of live cattle, sheep, goats and pigs during early outbreaks or, more recently, BY PCR IN PIGS or dogs." Everything known about EBOV in pigs comes from experimental inoculation. No treatment for EBOV in pigs is described anywhere in the folder. On outcome without one, ch29 29.5.2: "it appears that both [morbidity and mortality] CAN BE LOW in comparison to nonhuman primates, AS RECOVERY WAS OBSERVED EARLY POST INOCULATION IN YOUNGER ANIMALS which were not euthanized", and 29.5.4 records that the severe cases were the six-week-old piglets, in whom "DYSREGULATION/OVER-ACTIVATION OF THE PULMONARY PROINFLAMMATORY RESPONSE causes the immunopathogenesis". cfsph_2022 on what is actually done: "ANIMALS INFECTED WITH AFRICAN FILOVIRUSES ARE USUALLY EUTHANIZED to keep these viruses from spreading to humans." shic_2024_ebola_reston: "There is no treatment for pigs infected with Reston virus."

How this level was decided

INFERRED, AND FLAGGED, because it sits next to a null at C5 and the two look inconsistent until the reason is given. THEY ARE ANSWERING DIFFERENT QUESTIONS. C5 needs a magnitude -- what this costs a farm -- and the authors say the data will not support one. C7 needs only to know whether a treatment would improve the outcome, and there IS an examined observation on that: inoculated pigs recovered. That is the level 1 clause "animals recover acceptably without it", and it rests on a finding rather than on a silence. THE SECOND GROUND, PUT SECOND BECAUSE IT IS AN SVDV ARGUMENT RATHER THAN A C7 ONE: an infected herd would be euthanized for public health reasons, so the treatable pig would be killed regardless. THE ARGUMENT FOR A NULL is that four to six-week-old piglets in one laboratory are thin ground for a claim about how pigs in general fare, which is exactly why C5 is empty; if you think that reasoning reaches this cell too, it should be nulled with it. Level 1 held on the absent-disease clause: no natural infection of pigs.

C8 Vaccine availability

Availability of effective vaccines or bacterins

Available, or not needed: Effective vaccines are widely available in the US or secured for national outbreak response, or the disease does not clinically or economically justify vaccinating

CONFIRMED by Eric. The assignment reached this level from the evidence, and he has reviewed and ratified it.

Confirmed by Eric. CONFIRMED. "c8l1, little clinical or market imperative to undertake vaccine development for pigs"

How this level was decided

INFERRED. Level 1 on the "not needed" clause, by the FOURTH route in the standing note SCORING/vaccine_availability -- the response to an incursion would be eradication rather than vaccination. Your swine vesicular disease ruling is the precedent and the wording fits without adjustment: "in the current environment, L1 is correct. If the disease became established perhaps vaccine would be a useful management tool but today, THE OBJECTIVE WOULD BE RAPID [eradication]." The chapter says the same thing in its own words -- a rapid and decisive regulatory response, and euthanasia of infected animals. THE CLAIM IS SUPPORTABLE RATHER THAN A DEFAULT, which is what your PCV4 rule demands: this is not an agent of unknown disease-causing potential where "not needed" would be a guess. Pigs have never been naturally infected in fifty years of Ebola outbreaks across two dozen African epidemics, and vaccinating US herds against an agent that has never reached a pig is not something the agent's clinical or economic weight justifies. NOTE THAT LEVEL 3 WOULD READ AS A FUNDING RECOMMENDATION -- "needed but not available" -- and that is the one thing this cell must not say. Level 1 held. No natural pig infection anywhere, so no clinical or market imperative.

Levels and evidence are generated from data/assignments/ebola_virus.yml; the overview is authored in data/overviews/ebola_virus.md. Do not hand-edit this page — corrections go in data/assignments/CORRECTIONS.yml.

Quoted material marked Basis is from Zimmerman JJ, Karriker LA, Ramirez A, Schwartz KJ, Stevenson GW, Zhang J, eds. Diseases of Swine, 12th edition. Hoboken: Wiley Blackwell, 2025 — except where another source is named in the quotation itself.

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