Paths for Emergence of Superspreaders in Dengue Fever Spreading Network

Abstract

The identification of superspreaders is essential to contain an epidemic, especially when there is not enough information about the disease to develop precautionary measures. Unlike infections caused directly between individuals of the same species, epidemics caused by vectors have well-explored peculiarities. In this direction, we intend to study the networks obtained from the dissemination of dengue to verify, from the results of a simulation of agent based models, if the transmission of this disease follows the 20/80 rule for the proportion of spreaders and infected. We built different transmission networks considering the spread between vectors and humans up to the second generation and we observed that, despite the human-to-human transmission network follow the 20/80 rule, the other networks (human–mosquito, mosquito–mosquito and mosquito–human) did not follow this rule. Varying the density of agents, we show that the phenomenon of superspreading is accentuated with high density of mosquitoes. These characteristics of vector-borne disease networks need to be further explored, as these vectors are highly vulnerable to climate change, and a better understanding of disease spread can help better target dengue epidemic control strategies.