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	Podcast:		UC Science Today
	Episode:		Using surveillance data to track Zika virus
	Category:		Science & Medicine
	Duration:		00:01:03
	Publish Date:		2016-05-03 00:00:00
	Description:		One way researchers can track the spread of Zika virus is by closely monitoring mosquito populations. As part of a NASA-funded study, epidemiologist Chris Barker of the University of California, Davis is using surveillance data to help estimate the risk of Zika spread in the United States. Researchers are already doing this for West Nile Virus. "I think with Zika it will be similar, except that we’ll rely a lot on detection of human cases. We do a lot here with translating our research results into tools online. So we provide risk calculators that combine the temperature data from NASA, with the surveillance estimates to give overall estimates of risk for West Nile virus. And the NASA project is really aiming to develop tools that are very similar for Zika, Dengue, and Chikungunya viruses." NASA technology may also contribute to this large-scale surveillance. "So that will involve pairing that lab work with data from satellites; to try to figure out what we can estimate at broad scales, in terms of risk."
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