Evaluating Subcriticality during the Ebola Epidemic in West Africa.
The 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak is the largest and most widespread to date. In order to estimate ongoing transmission in the affected countries, we estimated the weekly average number of secondary cases caused by one individual infected with Ebola throughout the infectious period for each affected West African country using a stochastic hidden Markov model fitted to case data from the World Health Organization. If the average number of infections caused by one Ebola infection is less than 1.0, the epidemic is subcritical and cannot sustain itself. The epidemics in Liberia and Sierra Leone have approached subcriticality at some point during the epidemic; the epidemic in Guinea is ongoing with no evidence that it is subcritical. Response efforts to control the epidemic should continue in order to eliminate Ebola cases in West Africa.
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
Wayne T A
WT
Enanoria
Francis I. Proctor Foundation for Research in Ophthalmology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
Lee
L
Worden
Francis I. Proctor Foundation for Research in Ophthalmology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
Fengchen
F
Liu
Francis I. Proctor Foundation for Research in Ophthalmology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
Daozhou
D
Gao
Francis I. Proctor Foundation for Research in Ophthalmology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
Sarah
S
Ackley
Francis I. Proctor Foundation for Research in Ophthalmology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America; Mathematics and Statistics, Colby College, Waterville, Maine, United States of America.
James
J
Scott
Department of Ophthalmology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
Michael
M
Deiner
Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
Ernest
E
Mwebaze
Francis I. Proctor Foundation for Research in Ophthalmology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
Wui
W
Ip
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America; Francis I. Proctor Foundation for Research in Ophthalmology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America; Department of Ophthalmology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
Thomas M
TM
Lietman
Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America; Francis I. Proctor Foundation for Research in Ophthalmology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America; Department of Ophthalmology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
Travis C
TC
Porco
D000354:Africa, Western / Q000453:epidemiology; D029043:Ebolavirus; D058872:Epidemics; D019142:Hemorrhagic Fever, Ebola / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000635:transmission*; D006801:Humans; D008962:Models, Theoretical