Figure 5.
Effect of reactive control interventions on dengue epidemics. Stochastic dengue epidemics were simulated based on model 2 according to the epidemiology of dengue (Table 1, basic reproduction number, ℛ0 = 24), the population size of Easter Island, a baseline average of 3 mosquitoes per person, and reductions of 20% to 50% in mosquito density and the transmission rate between mosquitoes and hosts, respectively, following the start of the control interventions on March 16th, 2002. A total of 50 stochastic epidemic realizations are shown in blue. The red solid curve corresponds to the average of stochastic realizations. Note that the outbreak size is highly sensitive to even slight decreases in the percentage of reductions in the mosquito populations.