Spatio-temporal characteristics of dengue outbreaks

TL;DR

This study analyzes the spatio-temporal patterns of dengue outbreaks in Fortaleza, Brazil, revealing that human mobility significantly influences disease spread and providing estimates of the basic reproduction number aligned with other regions.

Contribution

It offers a novel analysis of dengue spread dynamics using spatial correlations and mean-field estimations, highlighting the role of mobility in epidemic propagation.

Findings

Correlation length of outbreaks is system-sized, indicating large-scale spatial influence.

Estimated basic reproduction number aligns with other regions, suggesting common spreading mechanisms.

Spatial analysis identifies high-prevalence regions and their temporal evolution.

Abstract

After their re-emergence in the last decades, dengue fever and other vector-borne diseases are a potential threat to the lives of millions of people. Based on a data set of dengue cases in the Brazilian city of Fortaleza, collected from 2011 to 2016, we study the spatio-temporal characteristics of dengue outbreaks to characterize epidemic and non-epidemic years. First, we identify regions that show a high prevalence of dengue cases and mosquito larvae in different years and also analyze their corresponding correlations. Our results show that the characteristic correlation length of the epidemic is of the order of the system size, suggesting that factors such as citizen mobility may play a major role as a drive for spatial spreading of vector-borne diseases. Inspired by this observation, we perform a mean-field estimation of the basic reproduction number and find that our estimated values agree well with the values reported for other regions, pointing towards similar underlying spreading mechanisms. These findings provide insights into the spreading characteristics of dengue in densely populated areas and should be of relevance for the design of improved disease containment strategies.