scholarly journals Asynchronicity of endemic and emerging mosquito-borne disease outbreaks in the Dominican Republic

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary E. Petrone ◽  
Rebecca Earnest ◽  
José Lourenço ◽  
Moritz U. G. Kraemer ◽  
Robert Paulino-Ramirez ◽  
...  

AbstractMosquito-borne viruses threaten the Caribbean due to the region’s tropical climate and seasonal reception of international tourists. Outbreaks of chikungunya and Zika have demonstrated the rapidity with which these viruses can spread. Concurrently, dengue fever cases have climbed over the past decade. Sustainable disease control measures are urgently needed to quell virus transmission and prevent future outbreaks. Here, to improve upon current control methods, we analyze temporal and spatial patterns of chikungunya, Zika, and dengue outbreaks reported in the Dominican Republic between 2012 and 2018. The viruses that cause these outbreaks are transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, which are sensitive to seasonal climatological variability. We evaluate whether climate and the spatio-temporal dynamics of dengue outbreaks could explain patterns of emerging disease outbreaks. We find that emerging disease outbreaks were robust to the climatological and spatio-temporal constraints defining seasonal dengue outbreak dynamics, indicating that constant surveillance is required to prevent future health crises.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary E. Petrone ◽  
Rebecca Earnest ◽  
José Lourenço ◽  
Moritz U.G. Kraemer ◽  
Robert Paulino-Ramirez ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTMosquito-borne viruses pose a perpetual public health threat to countries and territories in the Carribean due to the region’s tropical climate and seasonal reception of international tourists. Outbreaks of the emerging viruses chikungunya and Zika in 2014 and 2016, respectively, demonstrated the rapidity with which these viruses can spread between islands. At the same time, the number of reported dengue fever cases, caused by the endemic dengue virus, has steadily climbed over the past decade, and a large dengue outbreak that began sweeping through this region in 2019 continues in 2020. Sustainable disease and mosquito control measures are urgently needed to quell virus transmission in the long term and prevent future outbreaks from occurring. To improve upon current surveillance methods, we analyzed temporal and spatial patterns of chikungunya, Zika, and dengue outbreaks reported in the Dominican Republic between 2012 and 2018. The viruses that caused these outbreaks are transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, which are sensitive to seasonal climatological variability. In this study, we evaluated whether climate and the spatio-temporal dynamics of past dengue outbreaks could inform when and where future emerging disease outbreaks might occur. We found that the temporal and spatial distribution of emerging disease outbreaks did not conform to those of seasonal dengue outbreaks. Rather, the former occurred when climatological conditions were suboptimal for Aedes activity. Provincial dengue attack rates did not correspond to those of emerging diseases. Our study also provides evidence for under-reporting of dengue cases, especially following the 2016 Zika outbreak. We advocate for the implementation of a sustainable and long-term surveillance system to monitor the spread of known mosquito-borne viruses and to identify emerging threats before they cause outbreaks. Specifically, we recommend the use of febrile illness incidence, ca se fatality rates, and serosurveys during inter-outbreak periods to better understand rates of transmission and asymptomatic infection.


Forests ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 154 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. A. Pabodha Galgamuwa ◽  
Jida Wang ◽  
Charles J. Barden

North America’s midcontinent forest–prairie ecotone is currently exhibiting extensive eastern redcedar (ERC) (Juniperus virginiana L.) encroachment. Rapid expansion of ERC has major impacts on the species composition and forest structure within this region and suppresses previously dominant oak (Quercus) species. In Kansas, the growing-stock volume of ERC increased by 15,000% during 1965–2010. The overarching goal of this study was to evaluate the spatio-temporal dynamics of ERC in the forest–prairie ecotone of Kansas and understand its effects on deciduous forests. This was achieved through two specific objectives: (i) characterize an effective image classification approach to map ERC expansion, and (ii) assess ERC expansion between 1986 and 2017 in three study areas within the forest–prairie ecotone of Kansas, and especially expansion into deciduous forests. The analysis was based on satellite imagery acquired by Landsat TM and OLI sensors during 1986–2017. The use of multi-seasonal layer-stacks with a Support Vector Machine (SVM)-supervised classification was found to be the most effective approach to classify ERC distribution with high accuracy. The overall accuracies for the change maps generated for the three study areas ranged between 0.95 (95 CI: ±0.02) and 0.96 (±0.03). The total ERC cover increased in excess of 6000 acres in each study area during the 30-year period. The estimated percent increase of ERC cover was 139%, 539%, and 283% for the Tuttle Creek reservoir, Perry reservoir, and Bourbon County north study areas, respectively. This astounding rate of expansion had significant impacts on the deciduous forests where the conversion of deciduous woodlands to ERC, as a percentage of the total encroachment, were 48%, 56%, and 71%, for the Tuttle Creek reservoir, Perry reservoir, and Bourbon County north study areas, respectively. These results strongly affirm that control measures should be implemented immediately to restore the threatened deciduous woodlands of the region.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
V Borges ◽  
J Isidro ◽  
NS Trovão ◽  
S Duarte ◽  
H Cortes-Martins ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTBackgroundGenomic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal was rapidly implemented by the National Institute of Health in the early stages of the COVID-19 epidemic, in collaboration with more than 50 laboratories distributed nationwide. This unprecedented collaborative effort culminated in the generation of 1275 SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences, which represent 15.5% of all confirmed cases in March 2020, making Portugal one of the countries generating the highest volumes of SARS-CoV-2 genomic data during early COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsWe reconstructed and characterized the spatio-temporal dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 introductions and early dissemination in Portugal using recent phylodynamic models that allow integration of individual-based travel history, in order to obtain a more realistic reconstruction of the viral dynamics.ResultsWe detected at least 277 independent SARS-CoV-2 introductions, mostly from European countries (namely the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy and Switzerland), which was broadly consistent with the available travel history data, as well as with the countries with most frequent connectivity and/or with the highest number of Portuguese immigrants. Although most introductions were estimated to have occurred during the last week of February and the first week of March 2020, it is likely that SARS-CoV-2 was silently circulating in Portugal several weeks before the first confirmed local cases on March 2, 2020.Discussion and ConclusionWhile the implemented preventive and early control measures seem to have been successful in mitigating community transmission from most independent introductions, our results suggest that their earlier implementation could have largely minimized the number of introductions and subsequent virus expansion. Here we lay the foundation for genomic epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2 in Portugal, and highlight the need for systematic, continuous and geographically-representative genomic surveillance to guide national and international public health authorities toward the characterization and control of SARS-CoV-2 circulating diversity.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilo Rotela ◽  
Laura Lopez ◽  
María Frías Céspedes ◽  
Gabriela Barbas ◽  
Andrés Lighezzolo ◽  
...  

After elimination of the Aedes aegypti vector in South America in the 1960s, dengue outbreaks started to reoccur during the 1990s; strongly in Argentina since 1998. In 2016, Córdoba City had the largest dengue outbreak in its history. In this article we report this outbreak including spatio-temporal analysis of cases and vectors in the city. A total of 653 dengue cases were recorded by the laboratory-based dengue surveillance system and georeferenced by their residential addresses. Case maps were generated from the epidemiological week 1 (beginning of January) to week 19 (mid-May). Dengue outbreak temporal evolution was analysed globally and three specific, high-incidence zones were detected using Knox analysis to characterising its spatio-temporal attributes. Field and remotely sensed data were collected and analysed in real time and a vector presence map based on the MaxEnt approach was generated to define hotspots, towards which the pesticide- based strategy was then targeted. The recorded pattern of cases evolution within the community suggests that dengue control measures should be improved.


2016 ◽  
Vol 144 (12) ◽  
pp. 2485-2493 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. MALESIOS ◽  
N. DEMIRIS ◽  
P. KOSTOULAS ◽  
K. DADOUSIS ◽  
T. KOUTROUMANIDIS ◽  
...  

SUMMARYWe present and analyse data collected during a severe epidemic of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) that occurred between July and September 2000 in a region of northeastern Greece with strategic importance since it represents the southeastern border of Europe and Asia. We implement generic Bayesian methodology, which offers flexibility in the ability to fit several realistically complex models that simultaneously capture the presence of ‘excess’ zeros, the spatio-temporal dependence of the cases, assesses the impact of environmental noise and controls for multicollinearity issues. Our findings suggest that the epidemic was mostly driven by the size and the animal type of each farm as well as the distance between farms while environmental and other endemic factors were not important during this outbreak. Analyses of this kind may prove useful to informing decisions related to optimal control measures for potential future FMD outbreaks as well as other acute epidemics such as FMD.


2020 ◽  
Vol 637 ◽  
pp. 117-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
DW McGowan ◽  
ED Goldstein ◽  
ML Arimitsu ◽  
AL Deary ◽  
O Ormseth ◽  
...  

Pacific capelin Mallotus catervarius are planktivorous small pelagic fish that serve an intermediate trophic role in marine food webs. Due to the lack of a directed fishery or monitoring of capelin in the Northeast Pacific, limited information is available on their distribution and abundance, and how spatio-temporal fluctuations in capelin density affect their availability as prey. To provide information on life history, spatial patterns, and population dynamics of capelin in the Gulf of Alaska (GOA), we modeled distributions of spawning habitat and larval dispersal, and synthesized spatially indexed data from multiple independent sources from 1996 to 2016. Potential capelin spawning areas were broadly distributed across the GOA. Models of larval drift show the GOA’s advective circulation patterns disperse capelin larvae over the continental shelf and upper slope, indicating potential connections between spawning areas and observed offshore distributions that are influenced by the location and timing of spawning. Spatial overlap in composite distributions of larval and age-1+ fish was used to identify core areas where capelin consistently occur and concentrate. Capelin primarily occupy shelf waters near the Kodiak Archipelago, and are patchily distributed across the GOA shelf and inshore waters. Interannual variations in abundance along with spatio-temporal differences in density indicate that the availability of capelin to predators and monitoring surveys is highly variable in the GOA. We demonstrate that the limitations of individual data series can be compensated for by integrating multiple data sources to monitor fluctuations in distributions and abundance trends of an ecologically important species across a large marine ecosystem.


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