Inter-outbreak stability reflects the size of the susceptible pool and forecasts magnitudes of seasonal epidemics

Martin Rypdal and George Sugihara ()
Additional contact information
Martin Rypdal: UiT—The Arctic University of Norway
George Sugihara: University of California San Diego

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract For dengue fever and other seasonal epidemics we show how the stability of the preceding inter-outbreak period can predict subsequent total outbreak magnitude, and that a feasible stability metric can be computed from incidence data alone. As an observable of a dynamical system, incidence data contains information about the underlying mechanisms: climatic drivers, changing serotype pools, the ecology of the vector populations, and evolving viral strains. We present mathematical arguments to suggest a connection between stability measured in incidence data during the inter-outbreak period and the size of the effective susceptible population. The method is illustrated with an analysis of dengue incidence in San Juan, Puerto Rico, where forecasts can be made as early as three to four months ahead of an outbreak. These results have immediate significance for public health planning, and can be used in combination with existing forecasting methods and more comprehensive dengue models.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10099-y Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-10099-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10099-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().