Vector-borne epidemics driven by human mobility

TL;DR

This paper develops a metapopulation-based framework to model vector-borne epidemics influenced by human mobility, accurately predicting epidemic thresholds and spatial risk distribution, exemplified by Dengue in Cali, Colombia.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mathematical framework incorporating human mobility into vector-borne disease modeling, providing accurate epidemic thresholds and risk indicators.

Findings

Framework aligns well with mechanistic simulations.

Derived epidemic threshold accurately predicts outbreak conditions.

Risk indicator successfully reproduces spatial distribution of Dengue cases.

Abstract

Vector-borne epidemics are the result of the combination of different factors such as the crossed contagions between humans and vectors, their demographic distribution and human mobility among others. The current availability of information about the former ingredients demands their incorporation to current mathematical models for vector-borne disease transmission. Here, relying on metapopulation dynamics, we propose a framework whose results are in fair agreement with those obtained from mechanistic simulations. This framework allows us to derive an expression of the epidemic threshold capturing with high accuracy the conditions leading to the onset of epidemics. Driven by these insights, we obtain a prevalence indicator to rank the patches according to the risk of being affected by a vector-borne disease. We illustrate the utility of this epidemic risk indicator by reproducing the spatial distribution Dengue cases reported in the city of Santiago de Cali (Colombia) from 2015 to 2016.