Structural and Practical Identifiability Analysis of Zika Epidemiological Models

The Zika virus (ZIKV) epidemic has caused an ongoing threat to global health security and spurred new investigations of the virus. Use of epidemiological models for arbovirus diseases can be a powerful tool to assist in prevention and control of the emerging disease. In this article, we introduce six models of ZIKV, beginning with a general vector-borne model and gradually including different transmission routes of ZIKV. These epidemiological models use various combinations of disease transmission (vector and direct) and infectious classes (asymptomatic and pregnant), with addition to loss of immunity being included. The disease-induced death rate is omitted from the models. We test the structural and practical identifiability of the models to find whether unknown model parameters can uniquely be determined. The models were fit to obtain time-series data of cumulative incidences and pregnant infections from the Florida Department of Health Daily Zika Update Reports. The average relative estimation errors (AREs) were computed from the Monte Carlo simulations to further analyze the identifiability of the models. We show that direct transmission rates are not practically identifiable; however, fixed recovery rates improve identifiability overall. We found ARE is low for each model (only slightly higher for those that account for a pregnant class) and help to confirm a reproduction number greater than one at the start of the Florida epidemic. Basic reproduction number, \(\mathcal {R}_0\), is an epidemiologically important threshold value which gives the number of secondary cases generated by one infected individual in a totally susceptible population in duration of infectiousness. Elasticity of the reproduction numbers suggests that the mosquito-to-human ratio, mosquito life span and biting rate have the greatest potential for reducing the reproduction number of Zika, and therefore, corresponding control measures need to be focused on.