Pareto rules for malaria super-spreaders and super-spreading

Laura Cooper, Su Yun Kang, Donal Bisanzio, Kilama Maxwell, Isabel Rodriguez-Barraquer, Bryan Greenhouse, Chris Drakeley, Emmanuel Arinaitwe, Sarah Staedke, Peter W. Gething, Philip Eckhoff, Robert C. Reiner, Simon I. Hay, Grant Dorsey, Moses R. Kamya, Steven W. Lindsay, Bryan T. Grenfell and David L. Smith ()
Additional contact information
Laura Cooper: Princeton University
Su Yun Kang: University of Oxford
Donal Bisanzio: University of Oxford
Kilama Maxwell: Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration
Isabel Rodriguez-Barraquer: Johns Hopkins University
Bryan Greenhouse: University of California
Chris Drakeley: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Emmanuel Arinaitwe: Infectious Diseases Research Collaboration
Sarah Staedke: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Peter W. Gething: University of Oxford
Philip Eckhoff: Institute for Disease Modeling
Robert C. Reiner: University of Washington
Simon I. Hay: University of Washington
Grant Dorsey: University of California
Moses R. Kamya: Makerere University College of Health Sciences
Steven W. Lindsay: Durham University
Bryan T. Grenfell: Princeton University
David L. Smith: University of Washington

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Heterogeneity in transmission is a challenge for infectious disease dynamics and control. An 80-20 “Pareto” rule has been proposed to describe this heterogeneity whereby 80% of transmission is accounted for by 20% of individuals, herein called super-spreaders. It is unclear, however, whether super-spreading can be attributed to certain individuals or whether it is an unpredictable and unavoidable feature of epidemics. Here, we investigate heterogeneous malaria transmission at three sites in Uganda and find that super-spreading is negatively correlated with overall malaria transmission intensity. Mosquito biting among humans is 90-10 at the lowest transmission intensities declining to less than 70-30 at the highest intensities. For super-spreaders, biting ranges from 70-30 down to 60-40. The difference, approximately half the total variance, is due to environmental stochasticity. Super-spreading is thus partly due to super-spreaders, but modest gains are expected from targeting super-spreaders.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11861-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_s41467-019-11861-y

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11861-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 ().