Dynamics of dengue disease with human and vector mobility

Publication date: Available online 10 March 2018 Source:Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology Author(s): Murali Krishna Enduri, Shivakumar Jolad Dengue is a vector borne disease transmitted to humans by Aedes aegypti mosquitoes carrying virus of different serotypes. Dengue exhibits complex spatial and temporal dynamics, influenced by various biological, human and environmental factors. In this work, we study the dengue spread for a single serotype (DENV-1) including statistical models of human mobility with exponential step length distribution, by using reaction-diffusion equations and Stochastic Cellular Automata (SCA) approach. We analyze the spatial and temporal spreading of the disease using parameters from field studies. We choose mosquito density data from Ahmedabad city as a proxy for climate data in our SCA model. We find an interesting result that although human mobility makes the infection spread faster, there is an apparent early suppression of the epidemic compared to immobile humans. The disease extinction time is lesser when human mobility is included.

Source: Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology - March 10, 2018 Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research