Juliet Pulliam (University of Florida)

In 2010, a novel agent was associated with an outbreak in a student population in Muizenberg, South Africa. 22 out of 46 participants in the Clinic on the Meaningful Modeling of Epidemiological Data (MMED) were infected before the outbreak ceased. The same agent was associated with an outbreak in 2011, infecting 37 out of 56 MMED participants. In order to understand transmission of this agent, an unmatched case-control study was conducted among MMED participants in 2011. Risk factor analysis using multiple logistic regression indicated that attending MMED in 2010 was protective against infection in 2011 (aOR: 0.046, CI95: 0.0023-0.29). In addition, key epidemiological parameters, including the duration of infectiousness and the basic reproduction number, were estimated from infection and contact-tracing data. These estimates were used to assess deviation of the observed outbreak from expectations under the assumption of random mixing and to examine the effects of varying levels of population immunity on infection dynamics. Through investigation of these two outbreaks of Muizenberg Fever, MMED participants gained practical experience in data collection and analysis and learned the utility of multiple approaches to the study of infectious disease epidemiology.

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