TY - JOUR T1 - How Public Transport affected the Propagation of Zika and Microcephaly within Rio de Janeiro early in 2015 JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/345454 SP - 345454 AU - M. Armstrong AU - F.C. Coelho AU - L. Bastos AU - V. Saraceni AU - C. Lemos AU - M. Silva AU - L. Santana AU - J Crespo AU - M. Watanabe Y1 - 2018/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/06/14/345454.abstract N2 - From mid-2015 to the end of January 2016, 47 cases of microcephaly were observed in the city of Rio de Janeiro, that were not due to other viral infections (syphilis, toxoplasmosis, herpes & cytomegalovirus). These children were conceived from Dec 2014 to April 2015, far too early to be explained by the officially recorded cases from October 2015 onward. Zika must have been rampant in the city from late 2014 onward. In the first half of the paper we study how the geographic spread of microcephaly cases evolved from mid-2015 to January 2016 (and hence Zika 6-9 months earlier). Cases were not evenly spread in proportion to the number of births; they were preferentially located in the northern suburbs apparently following the public transport routes, with virtually no cases in favelas and none in the southern suburbs (Zona Sul). One key difference between the transport systems in the northern and southern suburbs is that the metro & rail system in the north is above ground in the north whereas in the southern part the metro is underground with air-conditioning in carriages and forced ventilation on the platforms. The train system does not extend to Zona Sul.In the second half of the paper we postulate that the air-conditioning and ventilation prevent mosquitos from biting people who are waiting on platforms in Zona Sul. Agent-based simulations are used to test this hypothesis. After confirming this, we postulate that providing air-conditioning and/or forced ventilation on the rail-metro transport hub in the city center (Centro) would significantly delay the propagation of arboviruses in the city, possibly preventing epidemics. One advantage of this proposal is that it does not require the use of insecticides. Health Secretariat of the City of Rio de Janeiro for providing the data;Former civil engineer, C Leal, who had worked as an intern in designing the metro system in the Zona Sul, for his insights into the transport system;Participants of the Seminar on InfoDengue held at FGV on 19 October 2016, where a preliminary version of the work was presented, for the constructive comments. ER -