Estimates of the biting rate and its uncertainty allowed us to estimate R 0 and its uncertainty from Eq. (8). Besides parameters more strictly related to the infectious process, R 0 is an increasing function of the square of k, as the biting rate controls transmission from humans to mosquitoes and from mosquitoes to humans, and the ratio of vectors to humans N v =N h (see Fig. S5 ). However, it should be considered that Eq. (8) depends on the number of vectors N v which substantially varies over time as a results of seasonal meteorological factors. Thus, as for models explicitly considering seasonal variations in transmission, it is difficult to precisely define R 0 . Therefore, we computed R 0 by considering the average value of N v from June 21 to July 26 2007 (i.e. the initial phase of the epidemic), as predicted by the vector dynamics model. We estimated R 0 to be 3.3 on average (95% CI 1.8-6, see Fig. 4e ). Fig. 4d shows that R VH 0 is below the critical threshold for all vales of B and thus the epidemic is mainly determined by R HV 0 , i.e. by transmission from humans to vectors. As for the effective reproduction number R e (i.e., the average number of secondary cases generated per primary case at a given time), which accounts for both depletion of susceptible individuals and mosquito dynamics, its value over time is shown in Fig. 4c and Fig. 4f (by considering or not interventions) . It emerges that R e , which does not change much by varying the number of breeding sites, can vary substantially over time as an effect of mosquito dynamics. This suggests that R 0 could have been even larger, depending on the time of epidemic seeding.