Seasonal Forecast of St. Louis Encephalitis Virus Transmission, Florida

摘要

Disease transmission forecasts can help minimizehuman and domestic animal health risks by indicatingwhere disease control and prevention efforts should befocused. For disease systems in which weather-relatedvariables affect pathogen proliferation, dispersal, or trans-mission, the potential for disease forecasting exists. Wepresent a seasonal forecast of St. Louis encephalitis virustransmission in Indian River County, Florida. We derive anempiric relationship between modeled land surface wet-ness and levels of SLEV transmission in humans. We thenuse these data to forecast SLEV transmission with a sea-sonal lead. Forecast skill is demonstrated, and a real-timeseasonal forecast of epidemic SLEV transmission is pre-sented. This study demonstrates how weather and climateforecast skill-verification analyses may be applied to testthe predictability of an empiric disease forecast model