A0616
Title: Understanding the spread of infectious diseases in edge areas of hotspots
Authors: Tzai-Hung Wen - National Taiwan University (Taiwan) [presenting]
Ya-Peng Lee - National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction (Taiwan)
Abstract: Hotspots have been shown to have a higher potential for transmission risk, making them a priority for controlling epidemics. However, the role of edge areas of hotspots in disease transmission remains unclear. The aim is to examine whether disease incidence rate growth is higher on the edges of disease hotspots during outbreaks. Our data is based on Taiwan's three most severe dengue epidemic years from 1998 to 2020. Conditional autoregressive models and Bayesian areal Wombling methods are employed to identify significant edge areas of hotspots based on the extent of risk difference between adjacent areas. The difference-in-difference estimator in CAR models measures the growth rate of risk by comparing the incidence rate between two groups (hotspots and edge areas) over two time periods. The results show that the edge areas of hotspots have a more significant increase in disease risk than hotspots, leading to a higher risk of disease transmission and potential disease foci. This finding explains the diffusion mechanism of epidemics, a pattern mixed with expansion and relocation, indicating that the edge areas play an important role. The study highlights the importance of considering edge areas of hotspots in disease transmission.
