Reducing mosquito-borne disease outbreak size: The relative importance of contact and transmissibility in a network model

The complex biological and environmental factors involved in the transmission of mosquito-borne diseases in humans have made their control elusive in many instances. Conceptual models contribute to gain insight and help to reduce the risk of taking poor managerial decisions. The focus of this paper is to compare, using a contact network model, the impact that perturbation of the number infectious contacts and of transmissibility have on the size of an outbreak. We illustrate the analysis on a contact network parametrized with data that associates humans and the mosquito Culex quinquefasciatus, a vector for lymphatic filariasis. The model suggests that, if the values corresponding to transmissibility and number of infectious contacts is relatively large, variations in the size of an outbreak are significantly in favor of control measures to reduce infectious contacts.