Yellowhead disease (YHD) is a viral infection of shrimp and prawn, in particular of the giant tiger prawn (Penaeus monodon), one of the two major species of farmed shrimp. The disease is highly lethal and contagious, killing shrimp quickly. Outbreaks of this disease have wiped out in a matter of days the entire populations of many shrimp farms that cultivated P. monodon, i.e. particularly Southeast Asian farms. In Thai, the disease is called Hua leung.
The disease is caused by the yellowhead virus (YHV), a positive-sense single-stranded RNA virus related to coronaviruses and arteriviruses. A closely related virus is the gill-associated virus (GAV), which is the type species of the genus Okavirus.
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