Estimating dengue type reproduction numbers for two provinces of Sri Lanka during the period 2013–14

Abstract

Dengue is an endemic disease in the southeast Asian country Sri Lanka. Two seasonal peaks of dengue incidence were observed every year since 2002 onwards. In this study, we formulate a 2-strain dengue model for analyzing the monthly seasonal dengue incidence data from 2 provinces of Sri Lanka during the period April 2013 to September 2014. The seasonality is incorporated in the model in terms of mosquito biting rate, which we assume to be time periodic. We estimated 2 primary reproduction numbers and the basic reproduction number in a periodic environment using dengue incidence data from the western and the central provinces of Sri Lanka. We also estimated different time-average type reproduction numbers from the model using the data from these 2 provinces. Using univariate sensitivity analysis, we measured the sensitivity of the time average reproduction number ( R¯¯¯0) When we vary different parameters of the proposed dengue model, we find the transmission probability of human susceptibility to strain-I infection and the mosquito mortality rate parameters are the most sensitive parameters in dengue transmission in these 2 provinces.