Jason Asher, Christopher Barker, Grace Chen, Derek Cummings, Matteo Chinazzi, Shelby Daniel-Wayman, Marc Fischer, Neil Ferguson, Dean Follman, M. Elizabeth Halloran, Michael Johansson, Kiersten Kugeler, Jennifer Kwan, Justin Lessler, Ira M. Longini, Stefano Merler, Andrew Monaghan, Ana Pastore y Piontti, Alex Perkins, D. Rebecca Prevots, Robert Reiner, Luca Rossi, Isabel Rodriguez-Barraquer, Amir S. Siraj, Kaiyuan Sun, Alessandro Vespignani, Qian Zhang
bioRxiv
September 18, 2017
ABSTRACT
Numerous Zika virus vaccines are being developed. However, identifying sites to evaluate the efficacy of a Zika virus vaccine is challenging due to the general decrease in Zika virus activity. We compare results from three different modeling approaches to estimate areas that may have increased relative risk of Zika virus transmission during 2017. The analysis focused on eight priority countries (i.e., Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, and Peru). The models projected low incidence rates during 2017 for all locations in the priority countries but identified several sub-national areas that may have increased relative risk of Zika virus transmission in 2017. Given the projected low incidence of disease, the total number of participants, number of study sites, or duration of study follow-up may need to be increased to meet the efficacy study endpoints.