Journal Article

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on rabies reemergence in Latin America: The case of Arequipa, Peru

Monroy, Ynes, Shinnick, Julianna, Zegarra, Edith, Mena, Claudia, Castillo-Neyra, Ricardo, De la Puente-León, Micaela, Raynor, Brinkley, Díaz, Elvis W., Levy, Michael Z.

2021

Overview

In Latin America, there has been tremendous progress towards eliminating canine rabies. Major components of rabies elimination programs leading to these successes have been constant and regular surveillance for rabid dogs and uninterrupted yearly mass dog vaccination campaigns. Unfortunately, vital measures to control COVID-19 have had the negative trade-off of jeopardizing these rabies elimination and prevention activities. We aimed to assess the effect of interrupting canine rabies surveillance and mass dog vaccination campaigns on rabies trends. We built a deterministic compartment model of dog rabies dynamics to create a conceptual framework for how different disruptions may affect rabies virus transmission. We parameterized the model for conditions found in Arequipa, Peru, a city with active rabies virus transmission. We examined our results over a range of plausible values for R 0 (1.36–2.0). Also, we prospectively evaluated surveillance data during the pandemic to detect temporal changes. Our model suggests that a decrease in canine vaccination coverage as well as decreased surveillance could lead to a sharp rise in canine rabies within months. These results were consistent over all plausible values of R 0 . Surveillance data from late 2020 and early 2021 confirms that in Arequipa, Peru, rabies cases are on an increasing trajectory. The rising rabies trends in Arequipa, if indicative to the region as whole, suggest that the achievements made in Latin America towards the elimination of dog-mediated human rabies may be in jeopardy.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Animals / Biology and Life Sciences / Control / Coronaviruses / COVID-19 / COVID-19 - epidemiology / COVID-19 - virology / COVID-19 vaccines / Disease Eradication / Disease prevention / Disease transmission / Dog Diseases - epidemiology / Dog Diseases - prevention & control / Dog Diseases - virology / Dogs / Emergencies / Emergency management / Emergency medical care / Emergency medical services / Emergency preparedness / Epidemics / Fatalities / Health surveillance / Humans / Latin America - epidemiology / Mass Vaccination - veterinary / Medicine and Health Sciences / Pandemics / Parameter estimation / People and places / Peru - epidemiology / Population / Protocols / Public health / Rabies / Rabies - epidemiology / Rabies - prevention & control / Rabies - virology / Rabies Vaccines - administration & dosage / Rabies virus - immunology / Risk factors / Samples / SARS-CoV-2 - physiology / Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 / Simulation / Statistics / Survival / Trends / Tropical diseases / Vaccination / Vaccination Coverage / Veterinarians / Viral diseases