Zika is still a significant threat — it could cost the U.S. millions in medical costs and productivity losses even if just 0.01 percent of the population is infected, according to a computational analysis out of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Using a computational model based on varying rates of spread of Zika in five Southeastern states and Texas — the areas of the country with the most Aedes aegypti mosquitoes — the researchers measured potential healthcare costs and productivity losses due to Zika.
They found a mild outbreak would cost the U.S. $183 million and a severe outbreak could cost up to $1.2 billion. Researchers considered a mild outbreak as one that affects just 7,000 people — about a 0.01 percent "attack rate" — or percentage of the population with infection. Researchers put a severe attack rate at 1 percent, or more than 704,000 infections. If 10 percent of the population in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas were infected, it would cost the U.S. $10 billion.
The researchers have reason to believe these rates of infection are possible. For reference, the attack rate in French Polynesia is 66 percent, Micronesia's Yap Island has a rate of 73 percent and the Bahia state of Brazil has a rate of 32 percent. In Puerto Rico, a disease called chikungunya, which is spread the same way as Zika, has an attack rate of 23.5 percent.
"This is a threat that has not gone away. Zika is still spreading silently and we are just now approaching mosquito season in the United States, which has the potential of significantly increasing the spread," study leader Bruce Lee, MD, an associate professor in the Department of International Health at the Bloomberg School, said in a statement. "There's still a lot we don't know about the virus, but it is becoming clear that more resources will be needed to protect public health. Understanding what a Zika epidemic might look like, however, can really help us with planning and policy making as we prepare."
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