An event-based model of superspreading in epidemics

A. James; J.W. Pitchford; M.J. Plank

doi:10.1098/rspb.2006.0219

An event-based model of superspreading in epidemics

A. James, J.W. Pitchford, M.J. Plank

Biology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

Many recent disease outbreaks (e.g. SARS, foot-and-mouth disease) exhibit superspreading, where relatively few individuals cause a large number of secondary cases. Epidemic models have previously treated this as a demographic phenomenon where each individual has an infectivity allocated at random from some distribution. Here, it is shown that superspreading can also be regarded as being caused by environmental variability, where superspreading events (SSEs) occur as a stochastic consequence of the complex network of interactions made by individuals. This interpretation based on SSEs is compared with data and its efficacy in evaluating epidemic control strategies is discussed.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	741-747
Number of pages	6
Journal	Proceedings of the Royal Society B
Volume	274
Issue number	1610
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2006.0219
Publication status	Published - 7 Mar 2007

Keywords

superspreading
epidemiology
branching process
environmental stochasticity
TRANSMISSION
OUTBREAK
CATTLE

Access to Document

10.1098/rspb.2006.0219

http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2006.0219

Cite this

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title = "An event-based model of superspreading in epidemics",

abstract = "Many recent disease outbreaks (e.g. SARS, foot-and-mouth disease) exhibit superspreading, where relatively few individuals cause a large number of secondary cases. Epidemic models have previously treated this as a demographic phenomenon where each individual has an infectivity allocated at random from some distribution. Here, it is shown that superspreading can also be regarded as being caused by environmental variability, where superspreading events (SSEs) occur as a stochastic consequence of the complex network of interactions made by individuals. This interpretation based on SSEs is compared with data and its efficacy in evaluating epidemic control strategies is discussed.",

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AU - Pitchford, J.W.

AU - Plank, M.J.

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AB - Many recent disease outbreaks (e.g. SARS, foot-and-mouth disease) exhibit superspreading, where relatively few individuals cause a large number of secondary cases. Epidemic models have previously treated this as a demographic phenomenon where each individual has an infectivity allocated at random from some distribution. Here, it is shown that superspreading can also be regarded as being caused by environmental variability, where superspreading events (SSEs) occur as a stochastic consequence of the complex network of interactions made by individuals. This interpretation based on SSEs is compared with data and its efficacy in evaluating epidemic control strategies is discussed.

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KW - branching process

KW - environmental stochasticity

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