RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The 2017 plague outbreak in Madagascar: data descriptions and epidemic modelling
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 247569
DO 10.1101/247569
A1 Van Kinh Nguyen
A1 Cesar Parra-Rojas
A1 Esteban A. Hernandez-Vargas
YR 2018
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/04/28/247569.abstract
AB From August to November 2017, Madagascar endured an outbreak of plague. A total of 2417 cases of plague were confirmed, causing a death toll of 209. Public health intervention efforts were introduced and successfully stopped the epidemic at the end of November. The plague, however, is endemic in the region and occurs annually, posing the risk of future outbreaks. To understand on the plague transmission, we collected real-time data from official reports, described the outbreak’s characteristics, and estimated transmission parameters using statistical and mathematical models. The pneumonic plague epidemic curve exhibited multiple peaks, coinciding with sporadic introductions of new bubonic cases. Optimal climate conditions for rat flea to flourish were observed during the epidemic. Estimate of the plague basic reproduction number during the large wave of the epidemic was high, ranging from 5–7 depending on model assumptions. The incubation and infection period for bubonic and pneumonic plague were 4.3 and 3.4 days and 3.8 and 2.9, respectively. Parameter estimation suggested that even with a small fraction of the population exposed to infected rat fleas (1/10000) and a small probability of transition from a bubonic case to a secondary pneumonic case (3%), the high human-to-human transmission rate can still generate a large outbreak. Controlling rodent and fleas can prevent new index cases, but managing human-to-human transmission is key to prevent large-scale outbreaks.