Improving early epidemiological assessment of emerging Aedes-transmitted epidemics using historical data

Julien Riou; Chiara Poletto; Pierre-Yves Boëlle

The timecourse of the ZIKV epidemics in Guadeloupe, Martinique and Saint-Martin between December, 2015 and February, 2017 diered markedly: the initial growth was early and sudden in Martinique, while it was delayed in Guadeloupe and Saint-Martin, starting only after four months of low-level transmission (Fig. 1) . The epidemic showed a sharp peak in Guadeloupe, reaching a maximal weekly incidence of 6.9 cases per 1,000 inhabitants 9 weeks after the start of the period of high epidemic activity. In Martinique and Saint-Martin, weekly incidence reached a maximum of 4.8 cases per 1,000 inhabitants after a period of 10 and 21 weeks, respectively. Conversely, the period of high epidemic activity was longer in Martinique and Saint-Martin (37 and 48 weeks, respectively), than in Guadeloupe (27 weeks). In the end, a total of about 37,000 cases were observed in Martinique (97 cases per 1,000 inhabitants), more than in Saint-Martin (90 cases per 1,000 inhabitants) and Guadeloupe (77 cases per 1,000 inhabitants). The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It . https://doi.org/10.1101/300954 doi: bioRxiv preprint 2013-2015 in Fig. 1C . The a priori distributions on the reproduction ratio and reporting rates for the ZIKV epidemics in the French West Indies dening the NI, R or L approaches are shown in Fig. 2 .