Climatic suitability for infectious disease transmission - Zika

Climatic conditions across Europe are becoming more suitable for emergence and transmission of climate‑sensitive infectious diseases. Zika is a viral disease transmitted by Aedes mosquitos. Symptoms typically include fever, rash, pains or malaise and are generally mild. However, Zika virus infections during pregnancy can cause infants to be born with malformations, preterm birth or miscarriage. Beside worldwide travel, climate change is also contributing to the increasing disease burden from the Zika virus in Europe since climatic conditions become more suitable for the virus and its mosquito vector.

One way of measuring the health threats associated with dengue under the changing climate is to estimate the changes in the basic reproduction rate (R0) associated with climatic conditions), hence estimating the expected number of secondary infections from one infectious case in a completely susceptible population. If R0 is higher than 1, outbreaks have the potential to grow. The higher R0 is, the faster the outbreak will grow.

Caveats

Key caveats and limitations of the V model and its parameterisation are fully described by Liu-Helmersson et al. (2014, 2016) and Rocklöv et al. (2019). The predicted R0 should not be confused with actual Zika cases, although it is an indicator of the potential for outbreaks.