Abstract
Yellow fever virus (YFV) is a zoonotic arbovirus affecting both humans and non-human primates (NHP’s) in Africa and South America. Previous descriptions of YF’s seasonality have relied purely on climatic explanations, despite the high proportion of cases occurring in people involved in agriculture. We use a series of random forest classification models to predict the monthly occurrence of YF in humans and NHP’s across Brazil, by fitting four classes of covariates related to the seasonality of climate and agriculture (planting and harvesting), crop output and host demography. We find that models captured seasonal YF reporting in humans and NHPs when they considered seasonality of agriculture rather than climate, particularly for monthly aggregated reports. These findings illustrate the seasonality of exposure, through agriculture, as a component of zoonotic spillover. Additionally, by highlighting crop types and anthropogenic seasonality, these results could directly identify areas at highest risk of zoonotic spillover.
Highlights
Yellow fever virus (YFV) is a zoonotic arbovirus affecting both humans and non-human primates (NHP’s) in Africa and South America
YF reports were highly seasonal in both humans and NHPs, though specific patterns differed slightly (Fig. 1)
We have identified the highly seasonal nature of YF reporting in both humans and NHP’s, as well as demonstrating the relative predictive power of utilising covariates related to the seasonality of climate and the seasonality of agriculture
Summary
Yellow fever virus (YFV) is a zoonotic arbovirus affecting both humans and non-human primates (NHP’s) in Africa and South America. As a consequence of a re-emergence process started in 2014, when the virus spread outside the Amazon region (endemic zone)[5], the densely populated SouthEastern states of the country were strongly affected in 2016–2017, including areas with no record of the disease for decades[6]. This was followed by an large and widespread outbreak during the following season, 2017–2018, with additional, low level transmission detected outside its endemic zone in the 2018–2019 season. We evaluate the relative importance of these components and identify individual crop types and agricultural activities that are related to increase YF reporting
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