Concurrent assessment of epidemiological and operational uncertainties for optimal outbreak control: Ebola as a case study.

ABSTRACT: Determining how best to manage an infectious disease outbreak may be hindered by both epidemiological uncertainty (i.e. about epidemiological processes) and operational uncertainty (i.e. about the effectiveness of candidate interventions). However, these two uncertainties are rarely addressed concurrently in epidemic studies. We present an approach to simultaneously address both sources of uncertainty, to elucidate which source most impedes decision-making. In the case of the 2014 West African Ebola outbreak, epidemiological uncertainty is represented by a large ensemble of published models. Operational uncertainty about three classes of interventions is assessed for a wide range of potential intervention effectiveness. We ranked each intervention by caseload reduction in each model, initi

SUBMITTER: Li SL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6599986 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature