Quantifying the spatial spread of dengue in a non-endemic Brazilian metropolis via transmission chain reconstruction.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 30026544.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-05230-4 and PMC identifier 6053439.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The ongoing geographical expansion of dengue is inducing an epidemiological transition in many previously transmission-free urban areas, which are now prone to annual epidemics. To analyze the spatiotemporal dynamics of dengue in these settings, we reconstruct transmission chains in Porto Alegre, Brazil, by applying a Bayesian inference model to geo-located dengue cases from 2013 to 2016. We found that transmission clusters expand by linearly increasing their diameter with time, at an average rate of about 600 m month<sup>-1</sup>. The majority (70.4%, 95% CI: 58.2-79.8%) of individual transmission events occur within a distance of 500 m. Cluster diameter, duration, and epidemic size are proportionally smaller when control interventions were more timely and intense. The results suggest that a large proportion of cases are transmitted via short-distance human movement (<1 km) and a limited contribution of long distance commuting within the city. These results can assist the design of control policies, including insecticide spraying and strategies for active case finding.
Medical subject headings
- Dengue
- Dengue Virus
- Spatio-Temporal Analysis