Infectious diseases are continuous challenges for animal shelters. Unfortunately, outbreaks are not uncommon. Sometimes they're bad luck and mainly the result of the inherent risk that is involved when you bring in lots of animals of questionable health status from different sources. However, if you add in things like inadequate facilities, poor training, overcrowding, poor adherence to protocols, bad protocols, lack of awareness about infectious diseases and failure to get expert help early in any outbreak, the likelihood of badness increases.
A few shelter outbreaks are underway at the moment, and they highlight some of the infectious disease challenges posed by different diseases in animal shelters. A common denominator in all of these outbreaks is the potential that something could have been done differently. It's possible (although unlikely) that everything that was done perfectly, however it's a rare outbreak where you can't find multiple areas for improvement. Once the crisis is over, a key aspect of outbreak management is an investigation of what really went wrong and why, with efforts to take measures to reduce the chance of it happening again.
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