Porcine Ephemeroviruses 1 and 2

LEVELS: NOT ASSIGNED; NOT ASSIGNED; NOT ASSIGNED; No validated assay; NOT ASSIGNED; NOT ASSIGNED; NOT ASSIGNED; NOT ASSIGNED


Register id	`porcine_ephemeroviruses_1_and_2`
Type	virus
Scientific name	Porcine Ephemeroviruses 1 and 2
Evidence	1 document(s)
Assigned	2026-09-04, against criteria version `093366e352a2`

Overview

Porcine ephemeroviruses 1 and 2 are rhabdoviruses reported in 2022 from pigs that were at the same time infected with classical swine fever virus. The reference chapter's treatment of them runs to two sentences, and the operative half is that these recently recognised viruses have not been found to cause specific clinical disease in pigs. Nothing else is recorded: no geographic distribution, no prevalence, no route of transmission, no host range, no diagnostic method, no treatment and no vaccine. Their generic relatives include bovine ephemeral fever virus, an insect-borne cattle disease, but nothing in the swine literature connects the porcine viruses to that pattern or to any other. They are on the register because they have been described in pigs, and the entry exists so the gap is visible rather than silent.

C1 Zoonotic potential

Likelihood of transmission from pigs to humans

NOT ASSESSED — no evidence in folder. No level was assigned on this criterion. This is a statement about what the evidence folder holds, not a finding about the agent.

Corrected by Eric from L1 Highly unlikely. Reason: RULED NOT ASSESSABLE AND ROUTED TO KISS ANALYSIS. Against every open cell on this entry he wrote the single word "KISS". SEVEN OF THE EIGHT CRITERIA ARE NOW NULL and the entry is unexportable, which is the intended outcome: the whole folder is two sentences inside a chapter overview, recording that two rhabdoviruses were found by sequencing in Chinese pigs that were simultaneously infected with classical swine fever virus. THE PASS HAD SCORED C1 AND C2 AT LEVEL 1 and he is emptying both. They rested on a structured silence -- the chapter writes Public Health sections for vesicular stomatitis and rabies and none for these -- plus the observation that no ephemerovirus has been reported in a human. Both were flagged in the cell as thin and as probable KISS candidates, and he agrees. He is applying the rule he set on PCV4 and influenza C: a genus-level inference is not evidence about this agent. NOTE WHAT IS NOT NULL AND WHY. C4 stays at level 4 and was not on the sheet, because it is the one claim the folder can support: identification depends on sequencing, which is the level 4 label in terms. That is a statement about the state of the diagnostic art rather than about what the agent does to a pig, so it survives the KISS logic. The same split was made on PCV4, where C4 stayed at level 4 while four other cells were nulled.

Basis. ch39 39.1 IS THE ENTIRE TREATMENT OF THIS AGENT IN THE FOLDER -- two sentences inside the chapter overview, and there is no other document: "Recently, TWO RHABDOVIRUSES (PORCINE EPHEMEROVIRUSES 1 AND 2) belonging to the genus Ephemerovirus in the subfamily Alpharhabdovirinae WERE DETECTED IN PIGS THAT WERE CONCURRENTLY INFECTED WITH CLASSICAL SWINE FEVER VIRUS (Wu et al. 2022)... THESE RECENTLY RECOGNIZED RHABDOVIRUSES HAVE NOT BEEN FOUND TO CAUSE SPECIFIC CLINICAL DISEASE IN PIGS. Therefore, this chapter is focused on the model rhabdoviruses: VSV and RABV." Nothing else is said: no geographic distribution, no prevalence, no transmission route, no host range, no diagnostic method, no US detection. The chapter gives Public Health sections to both agents it treats -- 39.2.3 for vesicular stomatitis virus, which is zoonotic, and 39.3.3 for rabies virus, which is famously so -- and gives none to the ephemeroviruses. The genus is named for bovine ephemeral fever virus, a vector-borne cattle pathogen not reported to infect people.

How this level was decided

INFERRED FROM A STRUCTURED SILENCE, and the silence is thin. What supports level 1 is that the chapter's authors plainly write about public health when they think there is a question -- they do it twice in this chapter, at length -- and did not do it here; and that no ephemerovirus has been reported to infect a human. FLAGGED HONESTLY: this rests on what the chapter chose to discuss and on the behaviour of a related cattle virus, not on anything anyone has looked for in people. THIS CELL SHOULD PROBABLY GO TO KISS ANALYSIS WITH THE REST OF THE ENTRY -- see C5 -- and it is scored only because the genus-level evidence is marginally more than nothing.

C2 Zoonotic impact

Severity of human illness caused by the agent

NOT ASSESSED — no evidence in folder. No level was assigned on this criterion. This is a statement about what the evidence folder holds, not a finding about the agent.

Corrected by Eric from L1 No human illness. Reason: RULED NOT ASSESSABLE AND ROUTED TO KISS ANALYSIS. Against every open cell on this entry he wrote the single word "KISS". SEVEN OF THE EIGHT CRITERIA ARE NOW NULL and the entry is unexportable, which is the intended outcome: the whole folder is two sentences inside a chapter overview, recording that two rhabdoviruses were found by sequencing in Chinese pigs that were simultaneously infected with classical swine fever virus. THE PASS HAD SCORED C1 AND C2 AT LEVEL 1 and he is emptying both. They rested on a structured silence -- the chapter writes Public Health sections for vesicular stomatitis and rabies and none for these -- plus the observation that no ephemerovirus has been reported in a human. Both were flagged in the cell as thin and as probable KISS candidates, and he agrees. He is applying the rule he set on PCV4 and influenza C: a genus-level inference is not evidence about this agent.

Basis. ch39 39.1 IS THE ENTIRE TREATMENT OF THIS AGENT IN THE FOLDER -- two sentences inside the chapter overview, and there is no other document: "Recently, TWO RHABDOVIRUSES (PORCINE EPHEMEROVIRUSES 1 AND 2) belonging to the genus Ephemerovirus in the subfamily Alpharhabdovirinae WERE DETECTED IN PIGS THAT WERE CONCURRENTLY INFECTED WITH CLASSICAL SWINE FEVER VIRUS (Wu et al. 2022)... THESE RECENTLY RECOGNIZED RHABDOVIRUSES HAVE NOT BEEN FOUND TO CAUSE SPECIFIC CLINICAL DISEASE IN PIGS. Therefore, this chapter is focused on the model rhabdoviruses: VSV and RABV." Nothing else is said: no geographic distribution, no prevalence, no transmission route, no host range, no diagnostic method, no US detection. No human illness with any ephemerovirus is described anywhere in chapter 39.

How this level was decided

INFERRED, following C1. Under C2 as rescoped, level 1 means pigs are not a source of human illness with this agent, and nothing in the folder says otherwise -- but nothing in the folder says much of anything. It moves with C1, and should go to KISS analysis with it if Eric rules that way.

C3 Herd introduction risk

Effort required to keep the agent out of the herd

CONFIRMED NOT ASSESSABLE. No level was assigned on this criterion, and Eric has reviewed that and ruled it correct — the folder holds nothing bearing on it. This is a statement about what the evidence supports, not a finding about the agent.

Confirmed by Eric. RULED NOT ASSESSABLE AND ROUTED TO KISS ANALYSIS. Against every open cell on this entry he wrote the single word "KISS". SEVEN OF THE EIGHT CRITERIA ARE NOW NULL and the entry is unexportable, which is the intended outcome: the whole folder is two sentences inside a chapter overview, recording that two rhabdoviruses were found by sequencing in Chinese pigs that were simultaneously infected with classical swine fever virus. The pass had already left these null, so he is confirming empty cells rather than emptying full ones. C5 was null because "have not been found to cause specific clinical disease" is not an examined negative when the only pigs examined had classical swine fever; C6 because these viruses have never been reported in US pigs, so there is no precedent of any kind to reason from; C3 and C7 because the folder says nothing about transmission or outcome; and C8 because asserting a vaccine is not needed is still a claim about the disease.

How this level was decided

NOT ASSESSED. C3 asks how hard the agent is to keep out of a US herd, and the folder does not say whether it is in US herds, how it moves between pigs, or whether it has a vector -- the genus name means "ephemeral fever" after a cattle virus spread by midges and mosquitoes, but nothing establishes that these two behave the same way. THE ONLY DETECTION ON RECORD IS IN CHINESE PIGS CO-INFECTED WITH CLASSICAL SWINE FEVER VIRUS, which is not a US prevalence figure and is not a transmission study. This follows the rule Eric set on PCV4 on 2026-09-03 and applied again to influenza C the same day: where the folder cannot support a claim, the cell stays empty rather than carrying a level that would be indistinguishable from a real one. The pass would otherwise have reached for level 1 by family resemblance, which is exactly the inference he overruled on PCV4.

C4 Detection difficulty

Difficulty of recognizing and confirming infection

No validated assay: No pathogen-specific test of known reliability exists anywhere, and identification depends on sequencing or on primers that have not been critically evaluated

Basis. ch39 39.1 IS THE ENTIRE TREATMENT OF THIS AGENT IN THE FOLDER -- two sentences inside the chapter overview, and there is no other document: "Recently, TWO RHABDOVIRUSES (PORCINE EPHEMEROVIRUSES 1 AND 2) belonging to the genus Ephemerovirus in the subfamily Alpharhabdovirinae WERE DETECTED IN PIGS THAT WERE CONCURRENTLY INFECTED WITH CLASSICAL SWINE FEVER VIRUS (Wu et al. 2022)... THESE RECENTLY RECOGNIZED RHABDOVIRUSES HAVE NOT BEEN FOUND TO CAUSE SPECIFIC CLINICAL DISEASE IN PIGS. Therefore, this chapter is focused on the model rhabdoviruses: VSV and RABV." Nothing else is said: no geographic distribution, no prevalence, no transmission route, no host range, no diagnostic method, no US detection. The two viruses were identified by sequencing in a study of pigs infected with something else. No assay, no reagent and no diagnostic method for either virus is described.

How this level was decided

Level 4, and this is the one cell the folder can carry. Under C4 as reworded on 2026-08-29 the axis is whether a VALIDATED assay exists and where it can be run, and for these two viruses the answer is that identification depends on sequencing -- which is the level 4 label in terms. They sit behind even porcine norovirus and porcine sapovirus, the framework's worked examples at that level: those at least have published primer sets whose sensitivity has been questioned, and these have nothing but the sequences from the paper that described them.

C5 Production cost

Financial impact on the infected farm's cost of production

Confirmed by Eric. RULED NOT ASSESSABLE AND ROUTED TO KISS ANALYSIS. Against every open cell on this entry he wrote the single word "KISS". SEVEN OF THE EIGHT CRITERIA ARE NOW NULL and the entry is unexportable, which is the intended outcome: the whole folder is two sentences inside a chapter overview, recording that two rhabdoviruses were found by sequencing in Chinese pigs that were simultaneously infected with classical swine fever virus. The pass had already left these null, so he is confirming empty cells rather than emptying full ones. C5 was null because "have not been found to cause specific clinical disease" is not an examined negative when the only pigs examined had classical swine fever; C6 because these viruses have never been reported in US pigs, so there is no precedent of any kind to reason from; C3 and C7 because the folder says nothing about transmission or outcome; and C8 because asserting a vaccine is not needed is still a claim about the disease.

How this level was decided

NOT ASSESSED, and this is the cell the whole entry turns on. The chapter says these viruses "HAVE NOT BEEN FOUND TO CAUSE SPECIFIC CLINICAL DISEASE IN PIGS", and it is tempting to read that as an examined negative and score level 1. IT IS NOT ONE. The only pigs anyone has looked at were co-infected with classical swine fever virus, which produces enough disease of its own to mask anything, and nobody has surveyed healthy pigs, compared sick with well, or inoculated an animal. Contrast porcine norovirus, scored level 1 on C5 because EVERY field detection was in a pig with no clinical signs across multiple independent surveys -- that is a finding, and this is not. Nulls stay null.

C6 Market impact

Duration of material disruption to pork and pig markets

Confirmed by Eric. RULED NOT ASSESSABLE AND ROUTED TO KISS ANALYSIS. Against every open cell on this entry he wrote the single word "KISS". SEVEN OF THE EIGHT CRITERIA ARE NOW NULL and the entry is unexportable, which is the intended outcome: the whole folder is two sentences inside a chapter overview, recording that two rhabdoviruses were found by sequencing in Chinese pigs that were simultaneously infected with classical swine fever virus. The pass had already left these null, so he is confirming empty cells rather than emptying full ones. C5 was null because "have not been found to cause specific clinical disease" is not an examined negative when the only pigs examined had classical swine fever; C6 because these viruses have never been reported in US pigs, so there is no precedent of any kind to reason from; C3 and C7 because the folder says nothing about transmission or outcome; and C8 because asserting a vaccine is not needed is still a claim about the disease.

How this level was decided

NOT ASSESSED, and the reason differs from the other nulls, so it is worth stating. The standing note SCORING/market_impact scores level 1 where an agent is already present in US pigs and no market move has followed, because that absence is an observation. THESE VIRUSES HAVE NEVER BEEN REPORTED IN US PIGS. The single detection is Chinese, so there is no US precedent to reason from and no foreign precedent either -- nobody has watched a market react or not react to this agent anywhere. That is the never-observed case the note reserves for a null cell, and it is why C6 is left empty here when it was scored for Saint Valerien virus, which has been found in US pigs.

C7 Treatment potential

Potential for treatment to improve outcomes

Confirmed by Eric. RULED NOT ASSESSABLE AND ROUTED TO KISS ANALYSIS. Against every open cell on this entry he wrote the single word "KISS". SEVEN OF THE EIGHT CRITERIA ARE NOW NULL and the entry is unexportable, which is the intended outcome: the whole folder is two sentences inside a chapter overview, recording that two rhabdoviruses were found by sequencing in Chinese pigs that were simultaneously infected with classical swine fever virus. The pass had already left these null, so he is confirming empty cells rather than emptying full ones. C5 was null because "have not been found to cause specific clinical disease" is not an examined negative when the only pigs examined had classical swine fever; C6 because these viruses have never been reported in US pigs, so there is no precedent of any kind to reason from; C3 and C7 because the folder says nothing about transmission or outcome; and C8 because asserting a vaccine is not needed is still a claim about the disease.

How this level was decided

NOT ASSESSED. C7 asks whether outcomes would meaningfully improve if a treatment existed, and there is no outcome on record either to improve or to rule out. Scoring level 1 would assert that pigs recover acceptably without treatment, which nobody has established, and Eric's rule of 2026-09-02 forbids the other easy answer -- that nobody treats viral disease is the prevailing opinion the criterion measures against, not evidence about it. This cell moves when C5 does.

C8 Vaccine availability

Availability of effective vaccines or bacterins

Confirmed by Eric. RULED NOT ASSESSABLE AND ROUTED TO KISS ANALYSIS. Against every open cell on this entry he wrote the single word "KISS". SEVEN OF THE EIGHT CRITERIA ARE NOW NULL and the entry is unexportable, which is the intended outcome: the whole folder is two sentences inside a chapter overview, recording that two rhabdoviruses were found by sequencing in Chinese pigs that were simultaneously infected with classical swine fever virus. The pass had already left these null, so he is confirming empty cells rather than emptying full ones. C5 was null because "have not been found to cause specific clinical disease" is not an examined negative when the only pigs examined had classical swine fever; C6 because these viruses have never been reported in US pigs, so there is no precedent of any kind to reason from; C3 and C7 because the folder says nothing about transmission or outcome; and C8 because asserting a vaccine is not needed is still a claim about the disease.

How this level was decided

NOT ASSESSED, and this null is written deliberately against what the pass would have done a week ago. The earlier reasoning was that C8 level 3 is reserved for a genuine gap, so an agent not shown to cause disease cannot reach level 3, leaving level 1 -- "not needed" -- as a safe true statement. ERIC OVERRULED THAT ON PCV4 ON 2026-09-03: asserting a vaccine is NOT NEEDED is still a claim about the disease, and it cannot be made for an agent whose disease-causing potential is unknown. He had made the same override on pasivirus_a on 2026-08-30. The rule is applied here without waiting to be told again.

Levels and evidence are generated from data/assignments/porcine_ephemeroviruses_1_and_2.yml; the overview is authored in data/overviews/porcine_ephemeroviruses_1_and_2.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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