Over the past several decades there has been a proliferation of epidemiological models with ordinary derivatives replaced by fractional derivatives in an an-hoc manner. These models may be mathematically interesting but their relevance is uncertain. Here we develop an SIR model for an epidemic, including vital dynamics, from an underlying stochastic process. We show how fractional differential operators arise naturally in these models whenever the recovery time from the disease is power law distributed. This can provide a model for a chronic disease process where individuals who are infected for a long time are unlikely to recover. The fractional order recovery model is shown to be consistent with the Kermack-McKendrick age-structured SIR model and it reduces to the Hethcote-Tudor integral equation SIR model. The derivation from a stochastic process is extended to discrete time, providing a stable numerical method for solving the model equations. We have carried out simulations of the fractional order recovery model showing convergence to equilibrium states. The number of infecteds in the endemic equilibrium state increases as the fractional order of the derivative tends to zero.
Fractional-order SIR models have become increasingly popular in the literature in recent years, however unlike the standard SIR model, they often lack a derivation from an underlying stochastic process. Here we derive a fractional-order infectivity SIR model from a stochastic process that incorporates a time-since-infection dependence on the infectivity of individuals. The fractional derivative appears in the generalised master equations of a continuous time random walk through SIR compartments, with a power-law function in the infectivity. We show that this model can also be formulated as an …
The spread of an infectious disease depends on intrinsic properties of the disease as well as the connectivity and actions of the population. This study investigates the dynamics of an SIR type model which accounts for human tendency to avoid infection while also maintaining preexisting, interpersonal relationships. Specifically, we use a network model in which individuals probabilistically deactivate connections to infected individuals and later reconnect to the same individuals upon recovery. To analyze this network model, a mean field approximation consisting of a system of fourteen ordinar…
We generalise the epidemic Renormalisation Group framework while connecting it to a SIR model with time-dependent coefficients. We then confront the model with COVID-19 in Denmark, Germany, Italy and France and show that the approach works rather well in reproducing the data. We also show that a better understanding of the time dependence of the recovery rate would require extending the model to take into account the number of deaths whenever these are over 15% of the total number of infected cases.
We consider the SIR epidemiological model applied to the evolution of COVID-19 with two approaches. In the first place we fit a global SIR model, with time delay, and constant parameters throughout the outbreak, including the contagion rate. The contention measures are reflected on an effective reduced susceptible population $N_{eff}$. In the second approach we consider a time-dependent contagion rate that reflects the contention measures either through a step by step fitting process or by following an exponential decay. In this last model the population is considered the one of the country $N…
The spread of an epidemic process is considered in the context of a spatial SIR stochastic model that includes a parameter $0\le p\le 1$ that assigns weights $p$ and $1- p$ to global and local infective contacts respectively. The model was previously studied by other authors in different contexts. In this work we characterized the behavior of the system around the threshold for epidemic spreading. We first used a deterministic approximation of the stochastic model and checked the existence of a threshold value of $p$ for exponential epidemic spread. An analytical expression, which defines a fu…
Using the classical Susceptible-Infected-Recovered epidemiological model, an analytical formula is derived for the number of beds occupied by Covid-19 patients. The analytical curve is fitted to data in Belgium, France, New York City and Switzerland, with a correlation coefficient exceeding 98.8%, suggesting that finer models are unnecessary with such macroscopic data. The fitting is used to extract estimates of the doubling time in the ascending phase of the epidemic, the mean recovery time and, for those who require medical intervention, the mean hospitalization time. Large variations can be…
We prove that, for Poisson transmission and recovery processes, the classic Susceptible $\to$ Infected $\to$ Recovered (SIR) epidemic model of Kermack and McKendrick provides, for any given time $t>0$, a strict lower bound on the expected number of suscpetibles and a strict upper bound on the expected number of recoveries in the general stochastic SIR epidemic. The proof is based on the recent message passing representation of SIR epidemics applied to a complete graph.
We study a discrete Susceptible-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model for the spread of infectious disease on a homogeneous tree and the limit behavior of the model in the case when the tree vertex degree tends to infinity. We obtain the distribution of the time it takes for a susceptible vertex to get infected in terms of a solution of a non-linear integral equation under broad assumptions on the model parameters. Namely, infection rates are assumed to be time-dependent, and recovery times are given by random variables with a fairly arbitrary distribution. We then study the behavior of the model in …
We present three data driven model-types for COVID-19 with a minimal number of parameters to provide insights into the spread of the disease that may be used for developing policy responses. The first is exponential growth, widely studied in analysis of early-time data. The second is a self-exciting branching process model which includes a delay in transmission and recovery. It allows for meaningful fit to early time stochastic data. The third is the well-known Susceptible-Infected-Resistant (SIR) model and its cousin, SEIR, with an "Exposed" component. All three models are related quantitativ…
A Markovian SIR (Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered) model is considered for the spread of an epidemic on a configuration model network, in which susceptible individuals may take preventive measures by dropping edges to infectious neighbours. An effective degree formulation of the model is used in conjunction with the theory of density dependent population processes to obtain a law of large numbers and a functional central limit theorem for the epidemic as the population size $N \to \infty$, assuming that the degrees of individuals are bounded. A central limit theorem is conjectured for the fina…
Consider a Markovian SIR epidemic model in a homogeneous community. To this model we add a rate at which individuals are tested, and once an infectious individual tests positive it is isolated and each of their contacts are traced and tested independently with some fixed probability. If such a traced individual tests positive it is isolated, and the contact tracing is iterated. This model is analysed using large population approximations, both for the early stage of the epidemic when the "to-be-traced components" of the epidemic behaves like a branching process, and for the main stage of the e…
We consider a very general stochastic model for an SIR epidemic on a network which allows an individual's infectious period, and the time it takes to contact each of its neighbours after becoming infected, to be correlated. We write down the message passing system of equations for this model and prove, for the first time, that it has a unique feasible solution. We also generalise an earlier result by proving that this solution provides a rigorous upper bound for the expected epidemic size (cumulative number of infection events) at any fixed time $t>0$. We specialise these results to a homogene…
We performed a thorough sensitivity analysis of the herd immunity threshold for discrete-time SIR compartmental models with a static network structure. We find unexpectedly that these models violate classical intuition which holds that the herd immunity threshold should monotonically increase with the transmission parameter. We find the existence of bifurcations in the herd immunity threshold in the high transmission probability regime. The extent of these bifurcations is modulated by the graph heterogeneity, the recovery parameter, and the network size. In the limit of large, well-mixed netwo…
In most models of the spread of disease over contact networks it is assumed that the probabilities per unit time of disease transmission and recovery from disease are constant, implying exponential distributions of the time intervals for transmission and recovery. Time intervals for real diseases, however, have distributions that in most cases are far from exponential, which leads to disagreements, both qualitative and quantitative, with the models. In this paper, we study a generalized version of the SIR (susceptible-infected-recovered) model of epidemic disease that allows for arbitrary dist…
