Modeling R ₀ for Pathogens with Environmental Transmission: Animal Movements, Pathogen Populations, and Local Infectious Zones

• Published in: International journal of environmental research and public health 2019-03, Vol.16 (6)
• Main Authors: Blackburn, Jason K, Ganz, Holly H, Ponciano, José Miguel, Turner, Wendy C, Ryan, Sadie J, Kamath, Pauline, Cizauskas, Carrie, Kausrud, Kyrre, Holt, Robert D, Stenseth, Nils Chr, Getz, Wayne M
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Animal Migration; Animals; Communicable Diseases - epidemiology; Disease Outbreaks; Humans; Models, Biological
• ISSN: 1660-4601
• DOI: 10.3390/ijerph16060954

How a disease is transmitted affects our ability to determine R₀, the average number of new cases caused by an infectious host at the onset of an epidemic. R₀ becomes progressively more difficult to compute as transmission varies from directly transmitted diseases to diseases that are vector-borne to environmentally transmitted diseases. Pathogens responsible for diseases with environmental transmission are typically maintained in environmental reservoirs that exhibit a complex spatial distribution of local infectious zones (LIZs). Understanding host encounters with LIZs and pathogen persistence within LIZs is required for an accurate R₀ and modeling these contacts requires an integrated geospatial and dynamical systems approach. Here we review how interactions between host and pathogen populations and environmental reservoirs are driven by landscape-level variables, and synthesize the quantitative framework needed to formulate outbreak response and disease control.