Journal article
Using real-time modelling to inform the 2017 Ebola outbreak response in DR Congo
- Abstract:
- Important policy questions during infections disease outbreaks include: i) How effective are particular interventions?; ii) When can resource-intensive interventions be removed? We used mathematical modelling to address these questions during the 2017 Ebola outbreak in Likati Health Zone, Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Eight cases occurred before 15 May 2017, when the Ebola Response Team (ERT; co-ordinated by the World Health Organisation and DRC Ministry of Health) was deployed to reduce transmission. We used a branching process model to estimate that, pre-ERT arrival, the reproduction number was R=1.49 (95% credible interval (0.67, 2.81)). The risk of further cases occurring without the ERT was estimated to be 0.97 (97%). However, no cases materialised, suggesting that the ERT’s measures were effective. We also estimated the risk of withdrawing the ERT in real-time. By the actual ERT withdrawal date (2 July 2017), the risk of future cases without the ERT was only 0.01, indicating that the ERT withdrawal decision was safe. We evaluated the sensitivity of our results to the estimated R value and considered different criteria for determining the ERT withdrawal date. This research provides an extensible modelling framework that can be used to guide decisions about when to relax interventions during future outbreaks.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
Actions
Access Document
- Files:
-
-
(Preview, Version of record, pdf, 869.8KB, Terms of use)
-
- Publisher copy:
- 10.1038/s41467-024-49888-5
Authors
- Publisher:
- Springer Nature
- Journal:
- Nature Communications More from this journal
- Volume:
- 15
- Issue:
- 1
- Article number:
- 5667
- Publication date:
- 2024-07-06
- Acceptance date:
- 2024-06-19
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
2041-1723
- ISSN:
-
2041-1723
- Language:
-
English
- Pubs id:
-
2007494
- Local pid:
-
pubs:2007494
- Source identifiers:
-
2007494
- Deposit date:
-
2024-07-06
This ORA record was generated from metadata provided by an external service. It has not been edited by the ORA Team.
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- Thompson et al.
- Copyright date:
- 2024
- Rights statement:
- © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
- Licence:
- CC Attribution (CC BY)
If you are the owner of this record, you can report an update to it here: Report update to this record