Susceptibility governs the dynamics of contagion. The classical SIR model is one of the simplest compartmental models of contagion spread, assuming a single shared susceptibility level. However, variation in susceptibility over a population can fundamentally affect the dynamics of contagion and thus the ultimate outcome of a pandemic. We develop mathematical machinery which explicitly considers susceptibility variation, illuminates how the susceptibility distribution is sculpted by contagion, and thence how such variation affects the SIR differential questions that govern contagion. Our methods allow us to derive closed form expressions for herd immunity thresholds as a function of initial susceptibility distributions and suggests an intuitively satisfying approach to inoculation when only a fraction of the population is accessible to such intervention. Of particular interest, if we assume static susceptibility of individuals in the susceptible pool, ignoring susceptibility diversity {\em always} results in overestimation of the herd immunity threshold and that difference can be dramatic. Therefore, we should develop robust measures of susceptibility variation as part of public health strategies for handling pandemics.
Modelling opinion dynamics during crises as complex contagion with feedback
The University of Sydney（悉尼大学）；Centre for Complex Systems, The University of Sydney（悉尼大学复杂系统中心）；Sydney Infectious Diseases Institute, The University of Sydney（悉尼大学悉尼传染病研究所）
Motivated by the need for novel robust approaches to modelling the Covid-19 epidemic, this paper treats a population of $N$ individuals as an inhomogeneous random social network (IRSN). The nodes of the network represent different types of individuals and the edges represent significant social relationships. An epidemic is pictured as a contagion process that changes daily, triggered on day $0$ by a seed infection introduced into the population. Individuals' social behaviour and health status are assumed to be random, with probability distributions that vary with their type. First a formulatio…
By incorporating delayed epidemic information and self-restricted travel behavior into the SIS model, we have investigated the coupled effects of timely and accurate epidemic information and people's sensitivity to the epidemic information on contagion. In the population with only local random movement, whether the epidemic information is delayed or not has no effect on the spread of the epidemic. People's high sensitivity to the epidemic information leads to their risk aversion behavior and the spread of the epidemic is suppressed. In the population with only global person-to-person movement,…
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 $N…
With the present highly infectious dominant SARS-CoV-2 strain of B1.1.529 or Omicron spreading around the globe, there is concern that the COVID-19 pandemic will not end soon and that it will be a race against time until a more contagious and virulent variant emerges. One of the most promising approaches for preventing virus propagation is to maintain continuous high vaccination efficacy among the population, thereby strengthening the population protective effect and preventing the majority of infection in the vaccinated population, as is known to occur with the Omicron variant frequently. Cou…
Non-pharmaceutical measures such as social distancing, can play an important role to control an epidemic in the absence of vaccinations. In this paper, we study the impact of social distancing on epidemics for which it is executable. We use a mathematical model combining human mobility and disease spreading. For the mobility dynamics, we design an agent based model consisting of pedestrian dynamics with a novel type of force to resemble social distancing in crowded sites. For the spreading dynamics, we consider the compartmental SIE dynamics plus an indirect transmission with the footprints of…
Two factors that are often ignored but could play a crucial role in the progression of an infectious disease are the distributions of inherent susceptibility ($σ_{inh}$) and external infectivity ($ι_{ext}$), in a given population. While the former is determined by the immunity of an individual towards a disease, the latter depends on the duration of exposure to the infection. We model the spatio-temporal propagation of a pandemic using a generalized SIR (Susceptible-Infected-Removed) model by introducing the susceptibility and infectivity distributions to understand their combined effects, whi…
An actively controlled Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible (actSIS) contagion model is presented for studying epidemic dynamics with continuous-time feedback control of infection rates. Our work is inspired by the observation that epidemics can be controlled through decentralized disease-control strategies such as quarantining, sheltering in place, social distancing, etc., where individuals actively modify their contact rates with others in response to observations of infection levels in the population. Accounting for a time lag in observations and categorizing individuals into distinct sub-popul…
In this work, we discuss the SIR epidemiological model and different variations of it applied to the propagation of the COVID-19 pandemia; we employ the data of the state of Guanajuato and of Mexico. We present some considerations that can improve the predictions made by those models. We consider a time-dependent infection rate, which we adjust to the data. Starting from a linear regime where the populations are much smaller that the country or state population and the population of susceptible (S) can be approximated in convenient units to S approximately 1, we make fits of the parameters. We…
We generalize the Susceptible-Infected-Removed model for epidemics to take into account generic effects of heterogeneity in the degree of susceptibility to infection in the population. We introduce a single new parameter corresponding to a power-law exponent of the susceptibility distribution that characterizes the population heterogeneity. We show that our generalized model is as simple as the original model which is contained as a limiting case. Because of this simplicity, numerical solutions can be generated easily and key properties of the epidemic wave can still be obtained exactly. In pa…
We study a SEIR model considered by Gomes et al. \cite{Gomes2020} and Aguas et al. \cite{Aguas2020} where different individuals are assumed to have different levels of susceptibility or exposure to infection. Under this heterogeneity assumption, epidemic growth is effectively suppressed when the percentage of population having acquired immunity surpasses a critical level - the herd immunity threshold - that is lower than in homogeneous populations. We find explicit formulas to calculate herd immunity thresholds and stable configuration, and explore extensions of the model.
The infection dynamics of a population under stationary isolation conditions is modeled. It is underlined that the stationary character of the isolation measures can be expected to imply that an effective SIR model with constant parameters should describe the infection process. Then, a derivation of this property is presented, assuming that the statistical fluctuations in the number of infection and recovered cases are disregarded. This effective SIR model shows a reduced population number and a constant $β$ parameter. The effects of also including the retardation between recovery and infectio…
