In:
eLife, eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd, Vol. 5 ( 2016-11-29)
Abstract:
Zika virus is an infectious disease primarily transmitted between people by mosquitoes. While most people develop mild flu-like symptoms, infection during pregnancy can interfere with how the baby’s head and brain develop. Until recently, the virus had only been seen sporadically in Africa and Asia, but since 2007, outbreaks have been recorded on several Pacific islands. In 2015, the Zika virus reached the Americas, and within six months over 1.5 million cases had been reported in Brazil alone. There is an urgent need to understand how the Zika virus moves within a population in order to help policymakers, and public health professionals, plan treatment and control of outbreaks of the disease. Researchers often use predictive models to estimate how a disease will spread. A parameter commonly calculated by these models is the “basic reproductive number”, or R0, which represents the average number of additional cases of the disease caused by one infected individual. Using models that incorporated data from Zika virus outbreaks that occurred on several Pacific islands, Champagne et al. have produced estimates of R0 that range from 1.5-4.1. The R0 values are greater than one, indicating that infection will spread within a population, but in the same range as those obtained for dengue fever, another closely related mosquito-borne disease. This suggests that by taking appropriate measures, the spread of Zika and dengue can be controlled to similar extents. A closer look at the relationship between the population size and the predicted R0 value for each Pacific island revealed an unexpected inverse relationship: the smaller the population, the larger the value of R0. Since other regional factors may also explain these large differences between settings, further work is needed to disentangle context-specific from disease-specific factors. In this respect, data about seroprevalence (the number of people whose blood shows evidence of a past infection) in different populations is crucial for precisely analyzing the spread of Zika virus.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
2050-084X
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.001
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.002
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.003
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.004
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.005
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.006
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.007
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.008
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.009
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.010
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.011
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.012
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.013
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.014
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.015
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.016
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.017
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.018
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.019
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.020
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.021
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.022
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.023
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.024
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.025
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.026
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.027
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.028
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.029
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.030
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.031
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.032
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.033
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.034
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.035
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.036
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.19874.037
Language:
English
Publisher:
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Publication Date:
2016
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2687154-3
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