Monthly contact rates among age groups ().

<p>Calculated from survey data on physical contacts from Mossong et al. <a href="http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003328#pcbi.1003328-Mossong1" target="_blank">[25]</a>.</p

Epidemiological parameters: definition, symbol, and initial value and range used in parameter estimation using the MCMC technique.

<p>‘Proposed’ in reference column means proposed by primary analysis of the data.</p

Flow diagram for the compartment model of the transmission dynamics of CA-MRSA for each age group.

<p> is the number of susceptible people with no prior colonization with CA-MRSA, is the number of people colonized for the first time, and are the number of people with first-time infection. are individuals with a history of past infections. People with infections from both groups ( and ) become colonized () with a common cure rate (). Further decolonization treatment (e.g. mupirocin) clears individuals and progress to the susceptible state (). Susceptible individuals with or without past infections progress to the colonized stage with the same force of infection , but their progression rate from colonized to infected stages are different ( vs , respectively). Colonized individuals without past infections have only spontaneous decolonization with rate while those with past infections are subject to additional decolonization treatment with rate . is the population immigration/migration rate per month.</p

Model prediction for first-time and recurrent infections for pediatric groups until December 2023 with mean parameter values and different decolonization treatment coverage after 2008.

<p>100% coverage for the first 4 age groups and 0 for adult groups (slim lines); 2). 100% coverage for the whole population (bold lines). The age-specific decolonization treatment coverage for till 2008 are time-dependent step functions with extreme values given by <a href="http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003328#pcbi.1003328.s002" target="_blank">Table S1</a> for 4 pediatric groups and 0 for 2 adult groups.</p

Long-term forecast of CA-MRSA infections in the pediatric groups under decolonization treatment strategy targeting colonized people with 30% coverage in different age groups.

<p>5–9 and 10–14 yrs. age groups (upper panel); all pediatric groups (lower panel).</p

Mean with different levels of decolonization treatment coverage for colonized people in various combinations of two of pediatric groups.

<p>The error bars are based on standard deviations of s under parameter uncertainty.</p

Statistics for estimated parameters based on the Markov chain generated by the adaptive Metropolis Hastings algorithm with 2004–2006 data.

<p>The geweke index closes to 1 means good convergence of the MCMC chain for that parameter.</p

Model fit to MRSA infection data using MCMC toolbox.

<p>The wider band shows 95% probability limits for individual observations, the darker narrower band shows 95% probability limit for mean prediction and the black curve in the middle is the median prediction. Little squares are data points; the vertical dashed line indicates the calibration period (2004–2006) and the validation period (2007–2008).</p

Model-based forecast of the number of first-time infections ()and recurrent infections () for the first age groups (), and reduction of total infections in the pediatric population (0–19 years) compared with baseline (no intervention) at the end of 2023 under different population-wide intervention strategies.

<p>Strategy 1: 100% reduction in contact of infected with others; Strategy 2: decolonization treatment for all infected.</p

PRCC and under different intervention strategies.

<p>Upper panel: PRCC of (, level of contact reduction in age group ), with based on a sample of size 100 using LHS (A1); for different levels of contact reduction under uncertainty of other model parameters (A2); and for different level of population-wide contact reduction under the uncertainty of other parameters(A3). Lower panel: PRCC of (, decolonization treatment coverage in age group ), with based on a sample of size 100 using LHS (B1); for different levels of decolonization treatment coverage under uncertainty of other model parameters (B2); and for different levels of population-wide decolonization treatment coverage under the uncertainty of other parameters (B3).</p