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- Published on: 7 October 2019
- Published on: 7 October 2019Zika virus surveillance gaps
A common issue with Zika virus surveillance, including during the epidemic in the Americas, is the time gap between local virus establishment and detecting the first case. In the Americas, we found this gap to be about 1.5 years (https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674%2818%2930171-5).
Based on the sequence data published by the ICMR (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567134819300048), we estimate that Zika virus was established in Rajasthan in early 2017, meaning that there was local transmission for ~1.5 years before the outbreak was detected in 2018 (http://virological.org/t/preliminary-origins-of-the-2018-zika-outbreak-i...). This suggests that the virus may have spread further during that time period and local surveillance networks should remain vigilant to detect other "silent" outbreaks.
Please email me at nathan.grubaugh@yale.edu if you have any questions about these comments.
Conflict of Interest:
None declared.