Question

Bats are natural reservoirs for Nipah virus and do not die from the infection. Knowing this information, would it be more valuable to report data for the incidence or prevalence of Nipah virus in bats (assuming that you also report the total number of bats in the population)?

Answer 1

Answer:

Prevalence would be more valuable

Explanation:

Prevalence is a measure of the frequency of individuals in a population affected by a condition during a particular period of time, while incidence is a measure that indicates the number of new individuals in a population who develop a condition during a particular period of time. Prevalence is different from incidence because prevalence includes all cases of a specified condition (i.e., new and preexisting cases). In consequence, in this case, prevalence is more valuable since it can be used to estimate the total number of infected bats. Conversely, incidence only is informative to determine the number of newly infected bats during a particular period of time, which may not be very informative because all infected bats (i.e., not only newly infected bats) can transmit the Nipah virus infection to humans.