Improving early epidemiological assessment of emerging Aedes-transmitted epidemics using historical data.

ABSTRACT: Model-based epidemiological assessment is useful to support decision-making at the beginning of an emerging Aedes-transmitted outbreak. However, early forecasts are generally unreliable as little information is available in the first few incidence data points. Here, we show how past Aedes-transmitted epidemics help improve these predictions. The approach was applied to the 2015-2017 Zika virus epidemics in three islands of the French West Indies, with historical data including other Aedes-transmitted diseases (chikungunya and Zika) in the same and other locations. Hierarchical models were used to build informative a priori distributions on the reproduction ratio and the reporting rates. The accuracy and sharpness of forecasts improved substantially when these a priori distributions were us

SUBMITTER: Riou J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6002135 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature