Models for Hantavirus Incidence in Chile

• Activity Number: 650
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Thursday, August 8, 2013 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Elaine O. Nsoesie*+ and Sumiko R. Mekaru and John S. Brownstein
• Companies: Children's Hospital Informatics Program, Children's Hospital Boston, Massachusetts, USA and Children's Hospital Informatics Program, Children's Hospital Boston, Massachusetts, USA and Children's Hospital Informatics Program, Children's Hospital Boston, Massachusetts, USA
• Keywords: hantavirus ; climate modeling ; prediction ; outbreaks ; time series modeling

Abstract

Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome (HPS) is a life threatening disease transmitted by the rodent Oligoryzomys longicaudatus in Chile. Hantavirus outbreaks are typically small and geographically confined. There have been several studies on risk estimation and spatial and temporal distribution of cases in relation to climate and environmental variables. However, few studies have modeled Hantavirus incidence for monitoring and forecasting purposes. Monthly counts of confirmed cases obtained from the Chile Ministry of Health for 2001-2012 suggest a seasonal trend in incidence, which appears to be captured by changes in climate variables. We present two time-series models: one based on forecasting future Hantavirus cases from previous incidence and the other includes cumulative monthly precipitation as an additional covariate. Although the inclusion of precipitation only improves the model fit by about 6%, the model better predicts the observed data trend especially towards the end of 2012. The models presented can be easily extended to other countries with high incidence of Hantavirus.