TY - JOUR
T1 - Characterizing Ebola Transmission Patterns Based on Internet News Reports
AU - Cleaton, Julie M.
AU - Viboud, Cecile
AU - Simonsen, Lone
AU - Hurtado, Ana
AU - Chowell, Gerardo
N1 - Funding Information:
C. V. and G. C. acknowledge financial support from the Division of International Epidemiology and Population Studies, the Fogarty International Center, US National Institutes of Health (NIH), funded in part by the Office of Pandemics and Emerging Threats at the US Department of Health and Human Services. G. C. also acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation (NSF; grant number 1414374) as part of the joint NSF-NIH-US Department of Agriculture Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases Program, United Kingdom Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (grant number BB/M008894/1; RAPIDD NFS grant number 1518939; and NSF grant number 1518529; and NSF-Division of Information & Intelligent Systems grant number1518939). L. S., C. V., and G. C. acknowledge support from the Research and Policy for Infectious Disease Dynamics Program of the US Department of Homeland Security, and L. S. received support from the Lundbeck Foundation, Denmark. No potential conflicts of interest. All authors have submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest. Conflicts that the editors consider relevant to the content of the manuscript have been disclosed.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 Published by Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society of America 2015. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.
PY - 2016/1/1
Y1 - 2016/1/1
N2 - Background.Detailed information on patient exposure, contact patterns, and discharge status is rarely available in real time from traditional surveillance systems in the context of an emerging infectious disease outbreak. Here, we validate the systematic collection of Internet news reports to characterize epidemiological patterns of Ebola virus disease (EVD) infections during the West African 2014-2015 outbreak. Methods.Based on 58 news reports, we analyzed 79 EVD clusters (286 cases) ranging in size from 1 to 33 cases between January 2014 and February 2015 in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Results.The majority of reported exposures stemmed from contact with family members (57.3%) followed by hospitals (18.2%) and funerals (12.7%). Our data indicate that funeral exposure was significantly more frequent in Sierra Leone (27.3%) followed by Guinea (18.2%) and Liberia (1.8%; χ2 test; P <. 0001). Funeral exposure was the dominant route of transmission until April 2014 (60%) and was replaced with hospital exposure in June 2014-July 2014 (70%), both of which declined after interventions were put in place. The mean reproduction number of the outbreak was 2.3 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.8, 2.7). The case fatality rate was estimated at 74.4% (95% CI, 68.3, 79.8). Conclusions.Overall, our findings based on news reports are in close agreement with those derived from traditional epidemiological surveillance data and with those reported for prior outbreaks. Our findings support the use of real-time information from trustworthy news reports to provide timely estimates of key epidemiological parameters that may be hard to ascertain otherwise.
AB - Background.Detailed information on patient exposure, contact patterns, and discharge status is rarely available in real time from traditional surveillance systems in the context of an emerging infectious disease outbreak. Here, we validate the systematic collection of Internet news reports to characterize epidemiological patterns of Ebola virus disease (EVD) infections during the West African 2014-2015 outbreak. Methods.Based on 58 news reports, we analyzed 79 EVD clusters (286 cases) ranging in size from 1 to 33 cases between January 2014 and February 2015 in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. Results.The majority of reported exposures stemmed from contact with family members (57.3%) followed by hospitals (18.2%) and funerals (12.7%). Our data indicate that funeral exposure was significantly more frequent in Sierra Leone (27.3%) followed by Guinea (18.2%) and Liberia (1.8%; χ2 test; P <. 0001). Funeral exposure was the dominant route of transmission until April 2014 (60%) and was replaced with hospital exposure in June 2014-July 2014 (70%), both of which declined after interventions were put in place. The mean reproduction number of the outbreak was 2.3 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.8, 2.7). The case fatality rate was estimated at 74.4% (95% CI, 68.3, 79.8). Conclusions.Overall, our findings based on news reports are in close agreement with those derived from traditional epidemiological surveillance data and with those reported for prior outbreaks. Our findings support the use of real-time information from trustworthy news reports to provide timely estimates of key epidemiological parameters that may be hard to ascertain otherwise.
KW - Ebola
KW - West Africa
KW - funeral transmission.
KW - hospital transmission
KW - transmission patterns
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U2 - 10.1093/cid/civ748
DO - 10.1093/cid/civ748
M3 - Article
C2 - 26338786
AN - SCOPUS:84954357754
SN - 1058-4838
VL - 62
SP - 24
EP - 31
JO - Clinical Infectious Diseases
JF - Clinical Infectious Diseases
IS - 1
ER -