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Strangles is one of the most prevalent horse diseases globally. The infected horses may be asymptomatic and can still carry the infectious pathogen after it recovers, which are named asymptomatic infected horses and long-term subclinical carriers, respectively. Based on these horses, this paper establishes a dynamical model to screen, measure, and model the spread of strangles. The basic reproduction number $ \mathcal{R}&#95;0 $ is computed through a next generation matrix method. By constructing Lyapunov functions, we concluded that the disease-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable if $ \mathcal{R}&#95;0 < 1 $, and the endemic equilibrium exits uniquely and is globally asymptotically stable if $ \mathcal{R}&#95;0 > 1 $. For example, while studying a strangles outbreak of a horse farm in England in 2012, we computed an $ \mathcal{R}&#95;0 = 0.8416 $ of this outbreak by data fitting. We further conducted a parameter sensitivity analysis of $ \mathcal{R}&#95;0 $ and the final size by numerical simulations. The results show that the asymptomatic horses mainly influence the final size of this outbreak and that long-term carriers are connected to an increased recurrence of strangles. Moreover, in terms of the three control measures implemented to control strangles(i.e., vaccination, implementing screening regularly and isolating symptomatic horses), the result shows that screening is the most effective measurement, followed by vaccination and isolation, which can provide effective guidance for horse management.

What Is Already Known About This Topic?: According to the National Brucellosis Prevention and Control Plan (2016-2020) (NBPCP), the awareness rate of high-risk populations in brucellosis-endemic areas should reach 90% by 2020. But the updated results have not been reported., What Is Added by This Report?: This report determined the awareness rate of brucellosis (17.74%), utilization of personal protective equipment (PPE) (20.13%), and their relationship with seroprevalence, which provides evidence for the effectiveness of the implementation of NBPCP., What Are the Implications for Public Health Practice?: The results suggest that health education should be conducted for high-risk populations to improve their brucellosis and protection knowledge., Competing Interests: Conflicts of interest: The authors who have taken part in this study declared that they did not have any other potential conflicts of interest., (Copyright and License information: Editorial Office of CCDCW, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention 2021.)

What is already known about this topic?, Annual morbidity analysis reports that summarized trends and changing epidemiology for notifiable diseases were published in 2013 and 2015 (1,2)., What is added by this report?, In 2018, the morbidity of national notifiable diseases was 559.41 per 100,000 population, an increase of 12.88% compared with the average rate between 2015-2017. The five notifiable diseases with the highest reported morbidity were hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD), infectious diarrhea, hepatitis B, tuberculosis, and influenza. The five regions with the highest reported morbidity of infectious diseases were Zhejiang Province, Guangxi Autonomous Region, Guangdong Province, Beijing Municipality, and Xinjiang Autonomous Region., What are the implications for public health practice?, Evidence on notifiable disease morbidity trends and changing epidemiology should help disease control and prevention agencies and medical institutions direct their response and prevention efforts. In addition, this report demonstrates the continued need for surveillance systems and high-quality data to identify focal points for disease control., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest statement: The authors who have taken part in this study declared that they do not have any other potential conflicts of interest., (Copyright and License information: Editorial Office of CCDCW, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention 2019.)