Interactions of periodic birth and shearing induce outbreak of Brucellosis in Inner Mongolia

Brucellosis, a zoonotic disease, has brought about enormous human suffering and tremendous economic burden to animal husbandry in China. However, Inner Mongolia is the hardest hit area of brucellosis in China. A total of 132,037 human cases have been reported from 2010 to 2020. Endogenous mechanisms of brucellosis spreading across Inner Mongolia till remains to be revealed. We propose a periodic epidemic model to investigate the effect of periodic parameter changes on brucellosis epidemics. Then we evaluate the basic reproduction number [Formula: see text] and analyze the global dynamics of the model. Furthermore, key parameters related to periodic transmission are estimated based on the monthly data of human brucellosis cases and the trend of newly infected human brucellosis cases are predicted in Inner Mongolia. Our modeling results illustrate that periodical birth and sheep shearing play a significant role in inducing periodical outbreak of brucellosis in Inner Mongolia. Moreover, it is exhibited that the annual peak number and the final scale of human brucellosis cases will be reduced dramatically with the delayed peak time of sheep birth. While the annual peak time will be lagged and the annual peak number will be decreased as the peak time of sheep shearing is postponed. In addition, we discover that it is difficult to stem brucellosis even if all sheep are vaccinated besides ewes. Nevertheless, the detection rate exceed a certain value 0.032 or the decaying rate of Brucella surpass a critical value 0.585, the human brucellosis can be regulated in Inner Mongolia according to the sensitivity analysis of [Formula: see text]. The insights shed herein may contribute to the careful implementation of brucellosis control strategies in other regions.