Rapid drop in the reproduction number during the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine (ISPM), University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Mathematical Biology, Virology, Epidemiology, Infectious Diseases, Public Health
- Keywords
- basic reproduction number, mathematical model, Ebola virus disease, outbreak, Democratic Republic of Congo
- Copyright
- © 2015 Althaus
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2015. Rapid drop in the reproduction number during the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e1041v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.1041v1
Abstract
In 2014, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) experienced an outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) with 69 reported cases. I fitted an EVD transmission model to data of this outbreak and estimated the basic reproduction number R0 = 5.2 (95% confidence interval [CI]: 4.0-6.7). The model suggests that the net reproduction number Rt fell below unity 28 days (95% CI: 25-34 days) after the onset of symptoms in the index case. This illustrates that early outbreak detection and rapid implementation of control interventions are crucial for preventing wider spread of EVD in rural areas.
Author Comment
This manuscript will be submitted elsewhere.