Rainfall and Development of Zika Virus

Abstract

Dear Editor, We read the publication on “Rainfall and Development of Zika Virus” with a great interest (1). Tosepu mentioned that “there is a relationship between the incidence of vectorborne diseases with rainfall” (1). In fact, this is not a new finding. The relationship between rainfall and incidence of arbovirus disease such as dengue is well demonstrated (2). For Zika virus an infection, a similar observation can be expected. A recent report from Thailand can also show the expected pattern of the prevalence of Zika virus infection in the areas with high rainfall (3). Nevertheless, it should be noted that there are also other factors that affect the epidemiology of Zika virus infection. The temperature is a good example. For the Indonesian case, Tosepu recently published another similar study confirming the relationship between temperature and Zika virus infection prevalence (4). Finally, the important fact is that Zika virus infection has multimodal transmission. The non-mosquito transmission is possible and this makes a significant distortion in the relationship between either rainfall or temperature and Zika virus infection prevalence.