Stochastic epidemic models: a survey

This paper is a survey paper on stochastic epidemic models. A simple stochastic epidemic model is defined and exact and asymptotic model properties (relying on a large community) are presented. The purpose of modelling is illustrated by studying effects of vaccination and also in terms of inference procedures for important parameters, such as the basic reproduction number and the critical vaccination coverage. Several generalizations towards realism, e.g. multitype and household epidemic models, are also presented, as is a model for endemic diseases.Comment: 26 pages, 4 figure

Stochastic epidemics in growing populations

Consider a uniformly mixing population which grows as a super-critical linear birth and death process. At some time an infectious disease (of SIR or SEIR type) is introduced by one individual being infected from outside. It is shown that three different scenarios may occur: 1) an epidemic never takes off, 2) an epidemic gets going and grows but at a slower rate than the community thus still being negligible in terms of population fractions, or 3) an epidemic takes off and grows quicker than the community eventually leading to an endemic equilibrium. Depending on the parameter values, either scenario 1 is the only possibility, both scenario 1 and 2 are possible, or scenario 1 and 3 are possible.Comment: 11 page

Stochastic epidemics in a homogeneous community

These notes describe stochastic epidemics in a homogenous community. Our main concern is stochastic compartmental models (i.e. models where each individual belongs to a compartment, which stands for its status regarding the epidemic under study : S for susceptible, E for exposed, I for infectious, R for recovered) for the spread of an infectious disease. In the present notes we restrict ourselves to homogeneously mixed communities. We present our general model and study the early stage of the epidemic in chapter 1. Chapter 2 studies the particular case of Markov models, especially in the asymptotic of a large population, which leads to a law of large numbers and a central limit theorem. Chapter 3 considers the case of a closed population, and describes the final size of the epidemic (i.e. the total number of individuals who ever get infected). Chapter 4 considers models with a constant influx of susceptibles (either by birth, immigration of loss of immunity of recovered individuals), and exploits the CLT and Large Deviations to study how long it takes for the stochastic disturbances to stop an endemic situation which is stable for the deterministic epidemic model. The document ends with an Appendix which presents several mathematical notions which are used in these notes, as well as solutions to many of the exercises which are proposed in the various chapters.Comment: Part I of "Stochastic Epidemic Models with Inference", T. Britton & E. Pardoux eds., Lecture Notes in Mathematics 2255, Springer 201

The Configuration Model for Partially Directed Graphs

The configuration model was originally defined for undirected networks and has recently been extended to directed networks. Many empirical networks are however neither undirected nor completely directed, but instead usually partially directed meaning that certain edges are directed and others are undirected. In the paper we define a configuration model for such networks where nodes have in-, out-, and undirected degrees that may be dependent. We prove conditions under which the resulting degree distributions converge to the intended degree distributions. The new model is shown to better approximate several empirical networks compared to undirected and completely directed networks.Comment: 19 pages, 3 figures, 2 table

Maximizing the size of the giant

We consider two classes of random graphs: $(a)$ Poissonian random graphs in which the $n$ vertices in the graph have i.i.d.\ weights distributed as $X$, where $\mathbb{E}(X) = \mu$. Edges are added according to a product measure and the probability that a vertex of weight $x$ shares and edge with a vertex of weight $y$ is given by $1-e^{-xy/(\mu n)}$. $(b)$ A thinned configuration model in which we create a ground-graph in which the $n$ vertices have i.i.d.\ ground-degrees, distributed as $D$, with $\mathbb{E}(D) = \mu$. The graph of interest is obtained by deleting edges independently with probability $1-p$. In both models the fraction of vertices in the largest connected component converges in probability to a constant $1-q$, where $q$ depends on $X$ or $D$ and $p$. We investigate for which distributions $X$ and $D$ with given $\mu$ and $p$, $1-q$ is maximized. We show that in the class of Poissonian random graphs, $X$ should have all its mass at 0 and one other real, which can be explicitly determined. For the thinned configuration model $D$ should have all its mass at 0 and two subsequent positive integers

A network epidemic model with preventive rewiring: comparative analysis of the initial phase

This paper is concerned with stochastic SIR and SEIR epidemic models on random networks in which individuals may rewire away from infected neighbors at some rate $\omega$ (and reconnect to non-infectious individuals with probability $\alpha$ or else simply drop the edge if $\alpha=0$), so-called preventive rewiring. The models are denoted SIR-$\omega$ and SEIR-$\omega$, and we focus attention on the early stages of an outbreak, where we derive expression for the basic reproduction number $R_0$ and the expected degree of the infectious nodes $E(D_I)$ using two different approximation approaches. The first approach approximates the early spread of an epidemic by a branching process, whereas the second one uses pair approximation. The expressions are compared with the corresponding empirical means obtained from stochastic simulations of SIR-$\omega$ and SEIR-$\omega$ epidemics on Poisson and scale-free networks. Without rewiring of exposed nodes, the two approaches predict the same epidemic threshold and the same $E(D_I)$ for both types of epidemics, the latter being very close to the mean degree obtained from simulated epidemics over Poisson networks. Above the epidemic threshold, pairwise models overestimate the value of $R_0$ computed from simulations, which turns out to be very close to the one predicted by the branching process approximation. When exposed individuals also rewire with $\alpha > 0$ (perhaps unaware of being infected), the two approaches give different epidemic thresholds, with the branching process approximation being more in agreement with simulations.Comment: 25 pages, 7 figure