Scientific article
OA Policy
English

Optimizing the timing of an end-of-outbreak declaration: Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

Published inScience advances, vol. 10, no. 27, eado7576
Publication date2024-07-03
Abstract

Following the apparent final case in an Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak, the decision to declare the outbreak over must balance societal benefits of relaxing interventions against the risk of resurgence. Estimates of the end-of-outbreak probability (the probability that no future cases will occur) provide quantitative evidence that can inform the timing of an end-of-outbreak declaration. An existing modeling approach for estimating the end-of-outbreak probability requires comprehensive contact tracing data describing who infected whom to be available, but such data are often unavailable or incomplete during outbreaks. Here, we develop a Markov chain Monte Carlo–based approach that extends the previous method and does not require contact tracing data. Considering data from two EVD outbreaks in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, we find that data describing who infected whom are not required to resolve uncertainty about when to declare an outbreak over.

Keywords
  • Democratic Republic of the Congo / epidemiology
  • Disease Outbreaks
  • Ebolavirus
  • Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / epidemiology
  • Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / prevention & control
  • Humans
  • Markov Chains
  • Monte Carlo Method
Funding
  • Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council - Doctoral Prize to W.S.H. [EP/W524311/1]
  • UK Research and Innovation - EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Mathematics for Real-World Systems II [EP/S022244/1]
Citation (ISO format)
HART, William S. et al. Optimizing the timing of an end-of-outbreak declaration: Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In: Science advances, 2024, vol. 10, n° 27, p. eado7576. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.ado7576
Main files (1)
Article (Published version)
Secondary files (1)
Appendix - Supplementary Text and Figs. S1 to S
accessLevelPublic
Identifiers
Additional URL for this publicationhttps://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ado7576
Journal ISSN2375-2548
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161downloads

Technical informations

Creation04/07/2024 13:04:53
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Update05/07/2024 14:30:17
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