A Q Fever Outbreak with a High Rate of Abortions at a Dairy Goat Farm: Coxiella burnetii Shedding, Environmental Contamination, and Viability.

This study describes a Q fever outbreak in a herd of 77 Alpine goats which suffered a high rate of abortions (81% [58/72]) in January 2017 and presents the results of monitoring the contamination and viability of in the farm environment several months after the outbreak. Over the course of 7 months, we studied bacterial shedding by 35 dams with abortions to monitor infection dynamics and the duration of excretion. The highest bacterial shedding load was observed in vaginal mucus, followed by in feces and in milk.