Volume 21, Number 8—August 2015
Dispatch
Transmission Models of Historical Ebola Outbreaks
John M. Drake, Iurii Bakach1, Matthew R. Just1, Suzanne M. O’Regan, Manoj Gambhir, and Isaac Chun-Hai Fung
Table 1
Compartmental models of historical Ebola virus outbreaks
| Feature | Model |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| Chowell et al. (1) | Lekone and Finkenstädt (4) | Legrand et al. (5) | |
| Outbreak* |
DRC 1995, Uganda 2000† |
DRC 1995‡ |
DRC 1995, Uganda 2000§ |
| Assumed | |||
| Homogeneous random mixing | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| All human-to-human contact |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
| Considered | |||
| Nosocomial transmission | No | No | Yes |
| Burial transmission |
No |
No |
Yes |
| No. transmission parameters |
2 (preintervention decays to postintervention) |
1 (decay to 0) |
3 (community, nosocomial, burial) |
| Distribution | Exponential | Geometric | Exponential |
| Underreporting accounted for | No | No | No |
*The DRC outbreak was caused by the Zaire strain; the Uganda outbreak was caused by the Sudan strain. DRC, Democratic Republic of Congo.
†Data sources: DRC 1995 (2), Uganda 2000 (3).
‡Data source: DRC 1995 (2).
§Data sources: DRC 1995 (2,6–8), Uganda 2000 (3,9).
1These authors contributed equally to this article.
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Page updated: July 15, 2015
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