Zika epidemic will burn out, researchers say

Research from Imperial College London has suggested that the current ongoing Zika epidemic is likely to end within three years.

The team of scientists claimed that the epidemic would soon burn out because there would be too few people left to infect and predicted it would be at least 10 years until the next epidemic.

The research was produced by the Medical Research Council Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling at Imperial. It maintained that while it was impossible to predict anything with full certainty, as more people became infected, infection levels would eventually fall due to the population reaching a level called ‘herd immunity’.

The news comes after Zika was declared a global public health emergency by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Commenting on the study’s findings, Professor Neil Ferguson, lead author of the research, said: “One possibility is climate may have in some way aided spread of the virus, as spread coincided with an El Nino event. Genetic mutation of the virus might also have played a role, although early data currently give limited support for this hypothesis.”