Modeling the Impact of Climate Change on Dengue Fever Incidence in Korea

Abstract

Dengue fever, which is transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes, is the most dominant vector-borne viral disease in the world. Although the autochthonous cases of dengue fever have not been reported yet in Korea, the dengue incidence has been increasingly imported by travelers returned from endemic area. On the other hand, climate changes are strongly associated with the spread of infectious mosquitoes. Therefore, increased international travelers and the climate changes increase the risk of dengue transmission in Korea. Since the secondary infection with the other dengue virus from primary infection is known as a risk factor of developing the severe disease, we develop a two-strain dengue model for primary and secondary infection based on [1]. Entomological parameters for mosquito’s life cycle are represented by temperature-dependent functions [2]. According to four scenarios of Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) as future climate data [3], we investigate the impact of climate changes on cumulative incidence. Furthermore, we explore the effect of control for importing cases from international travel.