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Dengue outbreaks: unpredictable incidence time series

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2019

A.F.B. Gabriel
Affiliation:
Instituto de Ciências Ambientais, Químicas e Farmacêuticas (ICAQF), Laboratório de Economia, Saúde e Poluição Ambiental, Universidade Federal de São Paulo – UNIFESP, São Paulo, Brazil
A.P. Alencar
Affiliation:
Instituto de Matemática e Estatística, Universidade de São Paulo – USP, São Paulo, Brazil
S.G.E.K. Miraglia*
Affiliation:
Instituto de Ciências Ambientais, Químicas e Farmacêuticas (ICAQF), Laboratório de Economia, Saúde e Poluição Ambiental, Universidade Federal de São Paulo – UNIFESP, São Paulo, Brazil
*
Author for correspondence: S.G.E.K. Miraglia, E-mail: miraglia@terra.com.br
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Abstract

Dengue fever is a disease with increasing incidence, now occurring in some regions which were not previously affected. Ribeirão Preto and São Paulo, municipalities in São Paulo state, Brazil, have been highlighted due to the high dengue incidences especially after 2009 and 2013. Therefore, the current study aims to analyse the temporal behaviour of dengue cases in the both municipalities and forecast the number of disease cases in the out-of-sample period, using time series models, especially SARIMA model. We fitted SARIMA models, which satisfactorily meet the dengue incidence data collected in the municipalities of Ribeirão Preto and São Paulo. However, the out-of-sample forecast confidence intervals are very wide and this fact is usually omitted in several papers. Despite the high variability, health services can use these models in order to anticipate disease scenarios, however, one should interpret with prudence since the magnitude of the epidemic may be underestimated.

Information

Type
Original Paper
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2019
Figure 0

Fig. 1. Monthly number of dengue cases: in the municipality of Ribeirão Preto from 2000 to 2016 and in the municipality of São Paulo from 2001 to 2016.

Figure 1

Table 1. Estimates, standard error and p-value of SARIMA(6,1,0)(2,0,0)12 model – Ribeirão Preto

Figure 2

Fig. 2. Residual plots: (a) time series plot, (b) qq plot, (c) autocorrelation and (d) partial autocorrelation – Ribeirão Preto.

Figure 3

Fig. 3. Logarithm of number of dengue cases observed plus 1 between 2000 and 2016 (solid line), logarithm of number of dengue cases predicted by the SARIMA(6,1,0)(2,0,0)12 model (dotted line), forecast for 2016 (solid line highlighted) and confidence intervals (shaded) – Ribeirão Preto.

Figure 4

Table 2. Estimates, standard error and p-value of SARIMA(6,1,0)(2,0,0)12 model – São Paulo

Figure 5

Fig. 4. Residual plots: (a) time series plot, (b) qq plot, (c) autocorrelation and (d) partial autocorrelation – São Paulo.

Figure 6

Fig. 5. Logarithm of number of dengue cases observed plus 1 between 2001 and 2016 (solid line), logarithm of number of dengue cases predicted by the SARIMA(6,1,0)(2,0,0)12 model (dotted line), forecast for 2016 (solid line highlighted) and confidence intervals (shaded) – São Paulo.

Figure 7

Fig. 6. Number of dengue cases between 2001 and 2016 (solid line), predicted number of dengue cases by SARIMA models (dotted line), forecast for 2016 (solid line highlighted) and confidence intervals (dashed).

Figure 8

Fig. 7. Number of dengue cases in 2016 (solid line with dots), forecast for 2016 (dashed) and confidence intervals (dashed).

Figure 9

Table 3. Studies using SARIMA models for estimation and prediction of time series