Estimating the reproductive number, total outbreak size, and reporting rates for Zika epidemics in South and Central America
- Virginia Military Inst., Lexington, VA (United States)
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States); The New Mexico Consortium, Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Colorado School of Mines, Golden, CO (United States)
- Los Alamos National Lab. (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
As South and Central American countries prepare for increased birth defects from Zika virus outbreaks and plan for mitigation strategies to minimize ongoing and future outbreaks, understanding important characteristics of Zika outbreaks and how they vary across regions is a challenging and important problem. We developed a mathematical model for the 2015/2016 Zika virus outbreak dynamics in Colombia, El Salvador, and Suriname. We fit the model to publicly available data provided by the Pan American Health Organization, using Approximate Bayesian Computation to estimate parameter distributions and provide uncertainty quantification. The model indicated that a country-level analysis was not appropriate for Colombia. We then estimated the basic reproduction number to range between 4 and 6 for El Salvador and Suriname with a median of 4.3 and 5.3, respectively. We estimated the reporting rate to be around 16% in El Salvador and 18% in Suriname with estimated total outbreak sizes of 73,395 and 21,647 people, respectively. The uncertainty in parameter estimates highlights a need for research and data collection that will better constrain parameter ranges.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC52-06NA25396
- OSTI ID:
- 1396120
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-17-20963
- Journal Information:
- Epidemics, Vol. 21; ISSN 1755-4365
- Publisher:
- ElsevierCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
Web of Science
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