Climatic suitability for infectious disease transmission - West Nile Virus

Climatic conditions across Europe are becoming more suitable for emergence and transmission of climate‑sensitive infectious diseases. West Nile virus (WNV) is a mosquito-borne virus causing mild to severe fevers and potentially other health conditions. Warmer winters and springs can drive outbreaks of the West Nile virus or expand it to previously unaffected regions as both the virus and its vector mosquito (Culex sp.) thrive at warmer temperatures.

Caveats

The WNV cases data related to human infections only were considered in the study. However, data on equines infections and host birds infections on the NUTS 3 level could also have been incorporated upon availability. The inclusion of the infections data for the equines and the host birds would further strengthen the model predictions though XGBoost performed reasonably well to handle the severe class-imbalance due to its flexibility of numerous hyperparameters tunning options.