Vegetation loss and the 2016 Oropouche fever outbreak in Peru

BACKGROUND Oropouche virus causes Oropouche fever, an arboviral disease transmitted mainly by midges of the genus Culicoides and Culex mosquitoes. Clinical presentation of Oropouche fever in humans includes fever, headache, rash, myalgia, and in rare cases spontaneous bleeding and aseptic meningitis. Landscape change has been proposed as a driver of Oropouche fever emergence. OBJECTIVE To investigate the landscape epidemiology of the Oropouche fever outbreak that began in April 2016 in Cusco, Peru. METHODS We used information of vegetation and multivariate spatial analyses including ecolo...