Abstract
BackgroundEbola virus disease has reemerged as a major public health crisis in Africa, with isolated cases also observed globally, during the current outbreak.MethodsTo estimate the basic reproductive ratio R0, which is a measure of the severity of the outbreak, we developed a SEIR (susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered) type deterministic model, and used data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for the Ebola outbreak in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Two different data sets are available: one with raw reported data and one with corrected data (as the CDC suspects under-reporting).ResultsUsing a deterministic ordinary differential equation transmission model for Ebola epidemic, the basic reproductive ratio R0 for Liberia resulted to be 1.757 and 1.9 for corrected and uncorrected case data, respectively. For Sierra Leone, R0 resulted to be 1.492 and 1.362 for corrected and uncorrected case data, respectively. In each of the two cases we considered, the estimate for the basic reproductive ratio was initially greater than unity leading to an epidemic outbreak.ConclusionWe obtained robust estimates for the value of R0 associated with the 2014 Ebola outbreak, and showed that there is close agreement between our estimates of R0. Analysis of our model also showed that effective isolation is required, with the contact rate in isolation less than one quarter of that for the infected non-isolated population, and that the fraction of high-risk individuals must be brought to less than 10% of the overall susceptible population, in order to bring the value of R0 to less than 1, and hence control the outbreak.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s40249-015-0043-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Ebola virus disease has reemerged as a major public health crisis in Africa, with isolated cases observed globally, during the current outbreak
The model we present in this paper explains different aspects of the disease dynamics
Using data obtained from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for the period of May 1st, 2014 up until October 1st, 2014, we present a deterministic SEIR type model for the transmission dynamics of the Ebola virus to estimate R0
Summary
Ebola virus disease has reemerged as a major public health crisis in Africa, with isolated cases observed globally, during the current outbreak. Ebola virus disease (EVD), named after the Ebola River in Zaire, is known to be a highly contagious disease with a high mortality rate [1,2]. Known as Ebola hemorrhagic Fever, EVD has a number of different strains. EVD is a viral infection caused by a virus of the family Filoviridae, genus Ebolavirus. There are five identified subspecies of the Ebolavirus. Four of the five subspecies: i) Ebolavirus (Zaire ebolavirus), EBOV ii) Sudan virus (Sudan ebolavirus), SUDV, iii) Bundibugyo virus (Bundibugyo ebolavirus), BDBV and iv) Ta Forest virus (Ta Forest ebolavirus), TAFV, have caused disease in humans.
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