Colleagues at the University of Notre Dame, the University of Oxford and other research analysts from the Flowminder Foundation at the University of Southampton and World Pop Project have found deeming information that in Latin America there are currently 90 million different types of infections that can make it easier for humans to likely spread the Zika virus to others.
The teams of analysts and professors have worked together to create a detailed model to show the possible projections of childbearing woman who could acquire the dangerous disease. They later published in the science magazine Nature Microbiology, Brazil is more likely to have a high amount of individuals infected by Zika because in the future the country will have the highest amount of infectious diseases in Latin America. They have created a five by five km grid/map across localized selections of Central and South America to figure out which areas could possibly have the highest cases of people with Zika.
They estimate that even though the virus might not spread all over the world, they presume 1.65 million childbearing woman will be infected with the disease during the first possible wave of the Zika epidemic if the virus continues to spread at the rate it is going. Though the research material does not adequately predict how many people in certain socio-economic situations could contract Zika, they are trying their best to predict the possible amount of people Zika can infect in different regions all across Lain America.
Scientists from all over the world are worried that it is hard to predict in general how many people are really infected with Zika since infected individuals are eighty percent less likely to know they are suffering from Zika related defects/infections. Many claim the published article on Nature Microbiology, data is inconclusive because more people could be living with Zika than they thought.
The team predicts their findings are not inconclusive because they have studied diseases that are contracted by mosquitoes, like the chikungunya and dengue diseases. Professor Tatem, who was a part of the researchers involved in the model projections of the Zika virus, commented that their findings are meant to warn others how high the risks are of contracting the virus and hopefully help people in the future learn how to aid the sick.
