Influenza vaccine policies that maximise health benefit through efficient use of limited resources are needed. Generally, influenza vaccination programmes have targeted individuals 65 y and over and those at risk, according to World Health Organization recommendations. We developed methods to synthesise the multiplicity of surveillance datasets in order to evaluate how changing target populations in the seasonal vaccination programme would affect infection rate and mortality. Using a contemporary evidence-synthesis approach, we use virological, clinical, epidemiological, and behavioural data to develop an age- and risk-stratified transmission model that reproduces the strain-specific behaviour of influenza over 14 seasons in England and Wales, having accounted for the vaccination uptake over this period. We estimate the reduction in infections and deaths achieved by the historical programme compared with no vaccination, and the reduction had different policies been in place over the period. We find that the current programme has averted 0.39 (95% credible interval 0.34–0.45) infections per dose of vaccine and 1.74 (1.16–3.02) deaths per 1,000 doses. Targeting transmitters by extending the current programme to 5–16-y-old children would increase the efficiency of the total programme, resulting in an overall reduction of 0.70 (0.52–0.81) infections per dose and 1.95 (1.28–3.39) deaths per 1,000 doses. In comparison, choosing the next group most at risk (50–64-y-olds) would prevent only 0.43 (0.35–0.52) infections per dose and 1.77 (1.15–3.14) deaths per 1,000 doses. This study proposes a framework to integrate influenza surveillance data into transmission models. Application to data from England and Wales confirms the role of children as key infection spreaders. The most efficient use of vaccine to reduce overall influenza morbidity and mortality is thus to target children in addition to older adults. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary Every winter, millions of people catch influenza, a viral infection of the airways. Most infected individuals recover quickly, but seasonal influenza outbreaks (epidemics) kill about half a million people annually. In countries with advanced health systems, these deaths occur mainly among elderly people and among individuals with long-term illnesses such as asthma and heart disease that increase the risk of complications occurring after influenza virus infection. Epidemics of influenza occur because small but frequent changes in the influenza virus mean that an immune response produced one year through infection provides only partial protection against influenza the following year. Annual immunization with a vaccine that contains killed influenza viruses of the major circulating strains can greatly reduce a person's risk of catching influenza by preparing the immune system to respond quickly when challenged by a live influenza virus. Consequently, many countries run seasonal influenza vaccination programs that, in line with World Health Organization recommendations, target individuals 65 years old and older and people in high-risk groups. Is this approach the best use of available resources? Might, for example, vaccination of children—the main transmitters of influenza—provide more benefit to the whole population than vaccination of elderly people? Vaccination of children would not directly prevent as many influenza-related deaths as vaccination of elderly people, but it might indirectly prevent deaths in elderly adults by inducing herd immunity—vaccination of a large part of a population can protect unvaccinated members of the population by reducing the chances of an infection spreading. Policy makers need to know whether a change to an influenza vaccination program is likely to provide additional population benefits before altering the program. In this evidence synthesis and modeling study, the researchers combine (synthesize) longitudinal influenza surveillance datasets (data collected over time) from England and Wales, develop a mathematical model for influenza transmission based on these data using a Bayesian statistical approach, and use the model to evaluate the impact on influenza infections and deaths of changes to the seasonal influenza vaccination program in England and Wales. The researchers developed an influenza transmission model using clinical data on influenza-like illness consultations collected in a primary care surveillance scheme for each week of 14 influenza seasons in England and Wales, virological information on respiratory viruses detected in a subset of patients presenting with clinically suspected influenza, and data on vaccination coverage in the whole population (epidemiological data). They also incorporated data on social contacts (behavioral data) and on immunity to influenza viruses in the population (seroepidemiological data) into their model. To estimate the impact of potential changes to the current vaccination strategy in England and Wales, the researchers used their model, which replicated the patterns of disease observed in the surveillance data, to run simulated epidemics for each influenza season and for three strains of influenza virus under various vaccination scenarios. Compared to no vaccination, the current program (vaccination of people 65 years old and older and people in high-risk groups) averted 0.39 infections per dose of vaccine and 1.74 deaths per 1,000 doses. Notably, the model predicted that extension of the program to target 5–16-year-old children would increase the efficiency of the program and would avert 0.70 infections per dose and 1.95 deaths per 1,000 doses. The finding that the transmission model developed by the researchers closely fit the available surveillance data suggests that the model should be able to predict what would have happened in England and Wales over the study period if an alternative vaccination regimen had been in place. The accuracy of such predictions may be limited, however, because the vaccination model is based on a series of simplifying assumptions. Importantly, given that influenza vaccination for children is being rolled out in England and Wales from September 2013, the model confirms that children are key spreaders of influenza and suggests that a vaccination program targeting children will reduce influenza infections and potentially influenza deaths in the whole population. More generally, the findings of this study support wider adoption of national vaccination strategies designed to block influenza transmission and to target those individuals most at risk from the complications of influenza infection. Please access these websites via the online version of this summary at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371.journal.pmed.1001527.

In war-torn Yemen, reports of confirmed cholera started in late September, 2016. The disease continues to plague Yemen today in what has become the largest documented cholera epidemic of modern times. We aimed to describe the key epidemiological features of this epidemic, including the drivers of cholera transmission during the outbreak. The Yemen Health Authorities set up a national cholera surveillance system to collect information on suspected cholera cases presenting at health facilities. Individual variables included symptom onset date, age, severity of dehydration, and rapid diagnostic test result. Suspected cholera cases were confirmed by culture, and a subset of samples had additional phenotypic and genotypic analysis. We first conducted descriptive analyses at national and governorate levels. We divided the epidemic into three time periods: the first wave (Sept 28, 2016, to April 23, 2017), the increasing phase of the second wave (April 24, 2017, to July 2, 2017), and the decreasing phase of the second wave (July 3, 2017, to March 12, 2018). We reconstructed the changes in cholera transmission over time by estimating the instantaneous reproduction number, Rt. Finally, we estimated the association between rainfall and the daily cholera incidence during the increasing phase of the second epidemic wave by fitting a spatiotemporal regression model. From Sept 28, 2016, to March 12, 2018, 1 103 683 suspected cholera cases (attack rate 3·69%) and 2385 deaths (case fatality risk 0·22%) were reported countrywide. The epidemic consisted of two distinct waves with a surge in transmission in May, 2017, corresponding to a median Rt of more than 2 in 13 of 23 governorates. Microbiological analyses suggested that the same Vibrio cholerae O1 Ogawa strain circulated in both waves. We found a positive, non-linear, association between weekly rainfall and suspected cholera incidence in the following 10 days; the relative risk of cholera after a weekly rainfall of 25 mm was 1·42 (95% CI 1·31-1·55) compared with a week without rain. Our analysis suggests that the small first cholera epidemic wave seeded cholera across Yemen during the dry season. When the rains returned in April, 2017, they triggered widespread cholera transmission that led to the large second wave. These results suggest that cholera could resurge during the ongoing 2018 rainy season if transmission remains active. Therefore, health authorities and partners should immediately enhance current control efforts to mitigate the risk of a new cholera epidemic wave in Yemen. Health Authorities of Yemen, WHO, and Médecins Sans Frontières.

Outbreaks of Ebola virus can cause substantial morbidity and mortality in affected regions. The largest outbreak of Ebola to date is currently underway in West Africa, with 3944 cases reported as of 5th September 2014. To develop a better understanding of Ebola transmission dynamics, we revisited data from the first known Ebola outbreak, which occurred in 1976 in Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo). By fitting a mathematical model to time series stratified by disease onset, outcome and source of infection, we were able to estimate several epidemiological quantities that have previously proved challenging to measure, including the contribution of hospital and community infection to transmission. We found evidence that transmission decreased considerably before the closure of the hospital, suggesting that the decline of the outbreak was most likely the result of changes in host behaviour. Our analysis suggests that the person-to-person reproduction number was 1.34 (95% CI: 0.92-2.11) in the early part of the outbreak. Using stochastic simulations we demonstrate that the same epidemiological conditions that were present in 1976 could have generated a large outbreak purely by chance. At the same time, the relatively high person-to-person basic reproduction number suggests that Ebola would have been difficult to control through hospital-based infection control measures alone.

The pacific islands of Micronesia have experienced several outbreaks of mosquito-borne diseases over the past decade. In outbreaks on small islands, the susceptible population is usually well defined, and there is no co-circulation of pathogens. Because of this, analysing such outbreaks can be useful for understanding the transmission dynamics of the pathogens involved, and particularly so for yet understudied pathogens such as Zika virus. Here, we compared three outbreaks of dengue and Zika virus in two different island settings in Micronesia, the Yap Main Islands and Fais, using a mathematical model of transmission dynamics and making full use of commonalities in disease and setting between the outbreaks. We found that the estimated reproduction numbers for Zika and dengue were similar when considered in the same setting, but that, conversely, reproduction number for the same disease can vary considerably by setting. On the Yap Main Islands, we estimated a reproduction number of 8.0–16 (95% Credible Interval (CI)) for the dengue outbreak and 4.8–14 (95% CI) for the Zika outbreak, whereas for the dengue outbreak on Fais our estimate was 28–102 (95% CI). We further found that the proportion of cases of Zika reported was smaller (95% CI 1.4%–1.9%) than that of dengue (95% CI: 47%–61%). We confirmed these results in extensive sensitivity analysis. They suggest that models for dengue transmission can be useful for estimating the predicted dynamics of Zika transmission, but care must be taken when extrapolating findings from one setting to another. Dengue and Zika are related viruses that are transmitted by the same species of mosquitoes. While dengue is well described and has affected people around the world for a long time, Zika has only recently caused outbreaks in human populations. To investigate whether the expected behaviour of Zika is similar to that of dengue, we compared three outbreaks in island populations of the pacific: two dengue outbreaks and one Zika outbreak. Island outbreaks are useful laboratories for understanding the spread of infections because they are usually short, well-identified episodes, whereas elsewhere it can be difficult to identify the properties of outbreaks when different viruses spread at the same time. In our investigation of the outbreaks in Micronesia we found that dengue and Zika virus did indeed behave similar in outbreaks they caused on the Yap Main Islands. A dengue outbreak on the smaller island of Fais, on the other hand, was different from the dengue outbreak on Yap in that transmission seems to have been much more intense. We conclude that dengue outbreaks are indeed a good model for Zika outbreaks when considered in the same setting, but that one must be careful when comparing outbreaks in different settings.

Significance: Between June 2014 and February 2015, thousands of Ebola treatment beds were introduced in Sierra Leone, alongside other infection control measures. However, there has been criticism of the timing and focus of this response, and it remains unclear how much it contributed to curbing the 2014–2015 Ebola epidemic. Using a mathematical model, we estimated how many Ebola virus disease cases the response averted in each district of Sierra Leone. We estimated that 56,600 (95% credible interval: 48,300–84,500) Ebola cases were averted in Sierra Leone as a direct result of additional treatment beds. Moreover, the number of cases averted would have been even greater had beds been available 1 month earlier.

Real-time forecasts based on mathematical models can inform critical decision-making during infectious disease outbreaks. Yet, epidemic forecasts are rarely evaluated during or after the event, and there is little guidance on the best metrics for assessment. Here, we propose an evaluation approach that disentangles different components of forecasting ability using metrics that separately assess the calibration, sharpness and bias of forecasts. This makes it possible to assess not just how close a forecast was to reality but also how well uncertainty has been quantified. We used this approach to analyse the performance of weekly forecasts we generated in real time for Western Area, Sierra Leone, during the 2013–16 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. We investigated a range of forecast model variants based on the model fits generated at the time with a semi-mechanistic model, and found that good probabilistic calibration was achievable at short time horizons of one or two weeks ahead but model predictions were increasingly unreliable at longer forecasting horizons. This suggests that forecasts may have been of good enough quality to inform decision making based on predictions a few weeks ahead of time but not longer, reflecting the high level of uncertainty in the processes driving the trajectory of the epidemic. Comparing forecasts based on the semi-mechanistic model to simpler null models showed that the best semi-mechanistic model variant performed better than the null models with respect to probabilistic calibration, and that this would have been identified from the earliest stages of the outbreak. As forecasts become a routine part of the toolkit in public health, standards for evaluation of performance will be important for assessing quality and improving credibility of mathematical models, and for elucidating difficulties and trade-offs when aiming to make the most useful and reliable forecasts. During epidemics, reliable forecasts can help allocate resources effectively to combat the disease. Various types of mathematical models can be used to make such forecasts. In order to assess how good the forecasts are, they need to be compared to what really happened. Here, we describe different approaches to assessing how good forecasts were that we made with mathematical models during the 2013–16 West African Ebola epidemic, focusing on one particularly affected area of Sierra Leone. We found that, using the type of models we used, it was possible to reliably predict the epidemic for a maximum of one or two weeks ahead, but no longer. Comparing different versions of our model to simpler models, we further found that it would have been possible to determine the model that was most reliable at making forecasts from early on in the epidemic. This suggests that there is value in assessing forecasts, and that it should be possible to improve forecasts by checking how good they are during an ongoing epidemic.