Descriptive Epidemiology of and Response to the High Pathogenicity Avian Influenza (H5N8) Epidemic in South African Coastal Seabirds, 2018

Figure 1

South Africa and its stretch of coastline from which high pathogenicity avian influenza (H5N8) in seabirds was reported between December 2017 and May 2018. The locations with more than 1000 dead seabirds are marked as hotspots. Malgas Island and the roof of a building in Cape Town harbour were the locations of outbreaks at swift tern colonies. The data from these hotspots were excluded from a kernel density estimation (KDE), performed using ArcMap software (v) 10.7.1, ESRI, Redland (USA), with an output cell size of 2 km and a search radius of 30 km. The results of the KDE are shown as a heat map indicating relative case density.