Abstract
BackgroundDespite the licensure of the world’s first dengue vaccine and the current development of additional vaccine candidates, successful Aedes control remains critical to the reduction of dengue virus transmission. To date, there is still limited literature that attempts to explain the spatio-temporal population dynamics of Aedes mosquitoes within a single city, which hinders the development of more effective citywide vector control strategies. Narrowing this knowledge gap requires consistent and longitudinal measurement of Aedes abundance across the city as well as examination of relationships between variables on a much finer scale.MethodsWe utilized a high-resolution longitudinal dataset generated from Singapore’s islandwide Gravitrap surveillance system over a 2-year period and built a Bayesian hierarchical model to explain the spatio-temporal dynamics of Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus in relation to a wide range of environmental and anthropogenic variables. We also created a baseline during our model assessment to serve as a benchmark to be compared with the model’s out-of-sample prediction/forecast accuracy as measured by the mean absolute error.ResultsFor both Aedes species, building age and nearby managed vegetation cover were found to have a significant positive association with the mean mosquito abundance, with the former being the strongest predictor. We also observed substantial evidence of a nonlinear effect of weekly maximum temperature on the Aedes abundance. Our models generally yielded modest but statistically significant reductions in the out-of-sample prediction/forecast error relative to the baseline.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that public residential estates with older buildings and more nearby managed vegetation should be prioritized for vector control inspections and community advocacy to reduce the abundance of Aedes mosquitoes and the risk of dengue transmission.Graphical
Highlights
Despite the licensure of the world’s first dengue vaccine and the current development of additional vaccine candidates, successful Aedes control remains critical to the reduction of dengue virus transmission
There is still very limited literature that attempts to explain the spatio-temporal population dynamics of Aedes mosquitoes within a single city [13], which hinders the development of more effective citywide vector control strategies
Only an average of 0.05 Ae. aegypti mosquitoes were caught per trap per week at a site within the Clementi area during the study period, in contrast to 0.28 at a site in Tampines. These data are updated on a weekly basis to provide policy makers with an indication of which areas may require more vector control to mitigate the risk of dengue transmission
Summary
Despite the licensure of the world’s first dengue vaccine and the current development of additional vaccine candidates, successful Aedes control remains critical to the reduction of dengue virus transmission. There is still limited literature that attempts to explain the spatio-temporal population dynamics of Aedes mosquitoes within a single city, which hinders the development of more effective citywide vector control strategies Narrowing this knowledge gap requires consistent and longitudinal measurement of Aedes abundance across the city as well as examination of relationships between variables on a much finer scale. There is still very limited literature that attempts to explain the spatio-temporal population dynamics of Aedes mosquitoes within a single city [13], which hinders the development of more effective citywide vector control strategies To bridge this knowledge gap requires consistent and longitudinal measurement of Aedes abundance across the city [13] as well as examination of relationships between variables at a much finer scale
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