PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - José Lourenço
AU  - Maria de Lourdes Monteiro
AU  - Tomás Valdez
AU  - Júlio Monteiro Rodrigues
AU  - Oliver G. Pybus
AU  - Nuno Rodrigues Faria
TI  - Epidemiology of the Zika virus outbreak in the Cabo Verde Islands, West Africa
AID  - 10.1101/198952
DP  - 2018 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 198952
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/01/11/198952.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/01/11/198952.full
AB  - Introduction The Zika virus (ZIKV) outbreak in the island nation of Cabo Verde was of unprecedented magnitude in Africa and the first to be associated with microcephaly in the continent.Methods Using a simple mathematical framework we present a first epidemiological assessment of attack and observation rates from 7,580 ZIKV notified cases and 18 microcephaly reports between July 2015 and May 2016.Results In line with observations from the Americas and elsewhere, the single-wave Cabo Verdean ZIKV epidemic was characterized by a basic reproductive number of 1.85 (95% CI, 1.5 −2.2), with overall the attack rate of 51.1% (range 42.1 - 61.1) and observation rate of 2.7% (range 2.29 - 3.33).Conclusion Current herd-immunity may not be sufficient to prevent future small-to-medium epidemics in Cabo Verde. Together with a small observation rate, these results highlight the need for rapid and integrated epidemiological, molecular and genomic surveillance to tackle forthcoming outbreaks of ZIKV and other arboviruses.