Historical trends demonstrate a pattern of increasingly frequent and severe spillover events of high-consequence zoonotic viruses.

The COVID-19 pandemic has focused attention on patterns of infectious disease spillover. Climate and land-use changes are predicted to increase the frequency of zoonotic spillover events, which have been the cause of most modern epidemics. Characterising historical trends in zoonotic spillover can provide insights into the expected frequency and severity of future epidemics, but historical epidemiological data remains largely fragmented and difficult to analyse.

Infectious Disease Underreporting Is Predicted by Country-Level Preparedness, Politics, and Pathogen Severity.

Underreporting of infectious diseases is a pervasive challenge in public health that has emerged as a central issue in characterizing the dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic. Infectious diseases are underreported for a range of reasons, including mild or asymptomatic infections, weak public health infrastructure, and government censorship. In this study, we investigated factors associated with cross-country and cross-pathogen variation in reporting.

Using social media to estimate Zika's impact on tourism: #babymoon, 2014-2017.

Zika virus infection during pregnancy can cause microcephaly and other birth defects. We hypothesized that the Latin America Zika epidemic resulted in pregnant women and their partners adopting behavioral changes to limit risk, leading them to forego travel to Zika-affected locations. We evaluated this hypothesis by studying travelers' intent and behavior through Twitter data related to babymoon: a holiday taken by parents-to-be before their baby is born.

Assessing global preparedness for the next pandemic: development and application of an Epidemic Preparedness Index.

Introduction: Robust metrics for national-level preparedness are critical for assessing global resilience to epidemic and pandemic outbreaks. However, existing preparedness assessments focus primarily on public health systems or specific legislative frameworks, and do not measure other essential capacities that enable and support public health preparedness and response.

Methods: We developed an Epidemic Preparedness Index (EPI) to assess national-level preparedness.

Brush mouse (Peromyscus boylii) population dynamics and hantavirus infection during a warm, drought period in southern Arizona.

We monitored Limestone Canyon hantavirus (LSCV) antibody prevalence, host (brush mouse, Peromyscus boylii) abundance, and environmental variables (temperature and rainfall) in brush mice captured on three trapping webs in southern Arizona for 5 yr. Although seasonal patterns were subtle, we observed large multiyear variation in population abundance and antibody prevalence. Limestone Canyon hantavirus infection in brush mouse populations varied over time with prevalence ranging from 0% to 33%.

Delayed density-dependent prevalence of Sin Nombre virus antibody in Montana deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) and implications for human disease risk.

American hantaviruses cause a severe respiratory disease known as hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS). In the United States, Sin Nombre virus (SNV), carried by the deer mouse ( Peromyscus maniculatus), is the etiologic agent in the majority of HPS cases. The relationship between deer mouse population density and SNV infection prevalence in deer mice is poorly understood.

A dispersal model for the range expansion of blacklegged tick (Acari: Ixodidae).

The blacklegged tick, Ixodes scapularis Say, a vector for the agents of Lyme borreliosis and other diseases, has expanded its range dramatically over the past 20 yr. However, the relative contributions of different vertebrate host species to this expansion have remained largely unexplored. To address this issue, we simulated the expansion of a theoretical tick population across a simple landscape by using a deterministic, spatially explicit, cellular automata model.