Ricerc@Sapienza

The risk of local transmission of chikungunya, dengue, and Zika viruses from viremic travelers arriving from affected areas is a real possibility in southern Europe, due to the large presence of the vector Aedes albopictus. The first chikungunya outbreak in Europe occurred in the Emilia-Romagna region, Italy, in 2007, prompting the regional public health department to implement an Ae. albopictus monitoring and control plan. This paper presents the procedure developed for the quality control of the data collected by the regional ovitrap monitoring network.

Both outbreaks started in small towns, but cases were also detected in nearby larger cities where transmission was limited to small clusters. The time spans between the first and the last symptom onsets were similar between the 2 outbreaks, and the delay from the symptom onset of the index case and the first case notified was considerable. Comparable infection and transmission rates were observed in laboratory. The basic reproductive number (R0) was estimated in the range of 1.8-6 (2007) and 1.5-2.6 (2017).