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[Preprint]. 2023 Dec 19:2023.12.18.23300175.
doi: 10.1101/2023.12.18.23300175.

Human movement and transmission dynamics early in Ebola outbreaks

Alexandria Gonzalez  1 , Behnam Nikparvar  1 , M Jeremiah Matson  2 , Stephanie N Seifert  3 , Heather D Ross  4 , Vincent Munster  5 , Nita Bharti  1
Affiliations

Human movement and transmission dynamics early in Ebola outbreaks

Alexandria Gonzalez et al. medRxiv. .

Abstract

Human movement drives the transmission and spread of communicable pathogens. It is especially influential for emerging pathogens when population immunity is low and spillover events are rare. We digitized serial printed maps to measure transportation networks (roads and rivers) in Central and West Africa as proxies for population mobility to assess relationships between movement and Ebola transmission. We find that the lengths of roads and rivers in close proximity to spillover sites at or near the time of spillover events are significantly correlated with the number of EVD cases, particularly in the first 100 days of each outbreak. Early management and containment efforts along transportation networks may be beneficial in mitigation during the early days of transmission and spatial spread for Ebola outbreaks.

Keywords: Biological, Health, and Medical Sciences; Ebola; Movement; Pathogen Transmission; Public Health and Epidemiology; Roads; Spillovers.

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Conflict of interest statement

All authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Spillover Events
(a) Locations of EBOV spillovers. Black triangles indicate locations of spillover events to humans, labeled with the location, year, and total cases in parentheses. Labels for subsequent outbreaks are shaded in gray. Orange filled polygons represent the estimated geospatial spread of each outbreak in the first 100 days of the outbreak; the West African outbreak shows the only non-contiguous area. (b) Outbreak measures: The total cases and the total cases in the first 100 days of each outbreak.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Total road and river network lengths for each spillover event at the time of the spillover event in a 150×150 study area surrounding the spillover. The 1:1 line is shaded in the lightest gray in the background, size of points corresponds to number of cases in the first 100 days of each outbreak, and color corresponds to location of spillover.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Linear Regression model on 150 km ×150 km study area. (a) Total cases in the first 100 days of each outbreak against the total combined road and river length in km (R-squared = 0.5377 , p = 0.0005) (b) Total cases in the first 100 days of each outbreak against the total road length in km (R-squared = 0.3012 , p = 0.0183).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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