ArticleJournal of theoretical biology2019
Sexual transmission and the probability of an end of the Ebola virus disease epidemic.
Article in Journal of theoretical biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 23 citations in OpenAlex.
- Key questions for modelling COVID-19 exit strategies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Pooled it
- Dynamic shift in the dominant transmission route of clade Ib monkeypox virus across networks with sexual and nonsexual contacts.Science advances · 2026Article
- Real-time inference of the end of an outbreak: Temporally aggregated disease incidence data and under-reporting.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2025Article
- Estimation of end-of-outbreak probabilities in the presence of delayed and incomplete case reporting.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Using real-time modelling to inform the 2017 Ebola outbreak response in DR Congo.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Optimizing the timing of an end-of-outbreak declaration: Ebola virus disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.Science advances · 2024Article
- Exact calculation of end-of-outbreak probabilities using contact tracing data.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Monitoring real-time transmission heterogeneity from incidence data.PLoS computational biology · 2022Article
- A quantitative method to project the probability of the end of an epidemic: Application to the COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan, 2020.Journal of theoretical biology · 2022Article
- Sub-spreading events limit the reliable elimination of heterogeneous epidemics.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2021Article
- Localized end-of-outbreak determination for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): examples from clusters in Japan.International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases · 2021Article
- An exact method for quantifying the reliability of end-of-epidemic declarations in real time.PLoS computational biology · 2020Article
- Rigorous surveillance is necessary for high confidence in end-of-outbreak declarations for Ebola and other infectious diseases.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Preface to theme issue 'Modelling infectious disease outbreaks in humans, animals and plants: epidemic forecasting and control'.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2019Article
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2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The criteria of zero Ebola cases defined by the World Health Organization did not explicitly account for the sexual transmission and led to multiple recrudescent events in West Africa from 2015 to 2016, partly indeed caused by sexual transmission from survivors. We devised a statistical model to compute the probability of the end of an Ebola virus disease epidemic, accounting for sexual transmission and under-ascertainment of cases. Analyzing the empirical data in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the performance of the proposed model was compared with the existing criteria comprising a fixed waiting time of 42 days since the last case testing negative or burial. We showed that the waiting time can vary depending on the sexual behaviors of survivors and their adherence to refraining from unprotected sex is likely one of the key factors in determining the absence of additional cases after declaration. If the proportional weight of sexual transmission among all secondary transmission events was substantial, ascertaining the end could even require waiting 1 year from the purported last case. While our proposed method offers an objectively interpretable probability of the end of an epidemic, it highlights that the computation requires a good knowledge of sexual contact.
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