Spatio-temporal analysis of fox rabies cases in Germany 2005-2006

Abstract

Aiming to achieve new insights into rabies dynamics, this paper is the first to investigate fox rabies in Germany from a space-time pattern perspective. Based on a locally restricted dataset covering a fourteen month period, our findings indicate a strongly aggregated spatiotemporal point pattern resulting from an inhomogeneous stochastic process. In contrast to spatial or temporal approaches or cellular automata, our analysis focuses on the disease dynamics in time and space in a continuous time domain. Our findings confirm existing theories regarding fox rabies control highlighting the potential risk of urban areas and the need for effective rabies vaccination.

Geospatial Analysis Applied to Epidemiological Studies of Rabies Disease: A Systematic Review

“…To illustrate the evolution history and phylogeographic of RABV in badgers. 17 [50] Continuous time and space [51].…”

“…Few papers using spatial analysis [25], [27], [47], [50] [14], [91], [92], [20], [21], [23], [27], [29], [32] Table 2.…”

“…The most commonly used primary unit of analysis was more than one unit of spatial analysis; for example, counties; cities; provinces; districts; human and animal rabies cases; municipalities; administrative towns; cities; rivers; lakes; departments; and villages were applied in fteen articles or approximately 38% of the published studies [9], [21], [72], [80], [81], [89], [92], [27], [32], [36], [40], [42], [58], [62], [67]. Human and rabies cases were used as primary units in seven studies [14], [50], [52], [60], [63], [65], [77], and municipalities were used in four studies [54], [69], [74], [83]. Two studies [23][7] used the province as the unit of analysis.…”

Spatial and temporal dynamic analysis of rabies: A review of current methodologies

“…However, there are still high-risk countries with a tendency towards spatial expansion of the disease. Examples in Asia include China (Zhang et al, 2011;Zhou et al, 2016), Republic of Kazakhstan (Abdrakhmanov et al, 2016), India (Brookes et al, 2018), Thailand (Thanapongtharm et al, 2021), Indonesia (Ward, 2014); in the Americas Mexico (Bárcenas-Reyes et al, 2019;Ortega-Sánchez et al, 2022), Chile (Escobar et al, 2015), Brazil (Oviedo-Pastrana et al, 2015); in Europe Germany (Eckardt et al, 2015) and Ukraine (Polupan et al, 2017); and Africa Tunisia (Kalthoum et al, 2021). The World Health Organization (WHO) mapped the rabies risk in 2013 with Asia and Africa being at the highest level (Figure 1; source: World Health Organization, modified).…”

Revealing spatio-temporal patterns of rabies spread among various categories of animals in the Republic of Kazakhstan, 2010-2013

“…The epidemic situation with respect to rabies in the endemic countries in the world, including the Republic of Kazakhstan (RK), is characterised by an uneven spread of infection. The disease is registered on every continent except Australia and Antarctica (Smreczak et al, 2012;Youla et al, 2014;Eckardt et al, 2015). The disease has an acute course with overt signs of polyencephalomyelitis and the mortality is 100% in the absence of immediate treatment.…”