Estimating spatiotemporally varying malaria reproduction numbers in a near elimination setting

Isobel Routledge (), José Eduardo Romero Chevéz, Zulma M. Cucunubá, Manuel Gomez Rodriguez, Caterina Guinovart, Kyle B. Gustafson, Kammerle Schneider, Patrick G.T. Walker, Azra C. Ghani and Samir Bhatt
Additional contact information
Isobel Routledge: Imperial College London
José Eduardo Romero Chevéz: Ministry of Health (MINSAL)
Zulma M. Cucunubá: Imperial College London
Manuel Gomez Rodriguez: Max Planck Institute for Software Systems
Caterina Guinovart: MACEPA, PATH
Kyle B. Gustafson: Institute for Disease Modeling
Kammerle Schneider: MACEPA, PATH
Patrick G.T. Walker: Imperial College London
Azra C. Ghani: Imperial College London
Samir Bhatt: Imperial College London

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-8

Abstract: Abstract In 2016 the World Health Organization identified 21 countries that could eliminate malaria by 2020. Monitoring progress towards this goal requires tracking ongoing transmission. Here we develop methods that estimate individual reproduction numbers and their variation through time and space. Individual reproduction numbers, Rc, describe the state of transmission at a point in time and differ from mean reproduction numbers, which are averages of the number of people infected by a typical case. We assess elimination progress in El Salvador using data for confirmed cases of malaria from 2010 to 2016. Our results demonstrate that whilst the average number of secondary malaria cases was below one (0.61, 95% CI 0.55–0.65), individual reproduction numbers often exceeded one. We estimate a decline in Rc between 2010 and 2016. However we also show that if importation is maintained at the same rate, the country may not achieve malaria elimination by 2020.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04577-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:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-04577-y

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

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04577-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 ().