Related papers: Increasing Herd Immunity with Influenza Revaccinat…
Here we show that herd immunity is not a measure we can implement, trust, control or depend on, and that waiting for herd immunity to play a role is tantamount to hope for the best. Herd immunity is not some protection, as it has been…
Mass vaccination offers a promising exit strategy for the COVID-19 pandemic. However, as vaccination progresses, demands to lift restrictions increase, despite most of the population remaining susceptible. Using our age-stratified SEIRD-ICU…
During epidemic outbreaks, information dissemination enhances individual protection, while social institutions influence the transmission through measures like government interventions, media campaigns, and hospital resource allocation.…
Disease spreading through human travel networks has been a topic of great interest in recent years, as witnessed during outbreaks of influenza A (H1N1) or SARS pandemics. One way to stop spreading over the airline network are travel…
We present a machine learning-based methodology capable of providing real-time ("nowcast") and forecast estimates of influenza activity in the US by leveraging data from multiple data sources including: Google searches, Twitter microblogs,…
In this study, we formulate a mathematical model incorporating age specific transmission dynamics of COVID-19 to evaluate the role of vaccination and treatment strategies in reducing the size of COVID-19 burden. Initially, we establish the…
Knowledge of the severity of an influenza outbreak is crucial for informing and monitoring appropriate public health responses, both during and after an epidemic. However, case-fatality, case-intensive care admission and…
Social dilemmas where the good of a group is at odds with individual interests are usually considered as static -- the dilemma does not change over time. In the COVID-19 pandemic, social dilemmas occurred in the mitigation of epidemic…
We study vaccine budget-sharing strategies in the SIR (Susceptible-Infected-Recovered) model given a structured community network to investigate the benefit of sharing vaccine across communities. The network studied comprises two…
Bipartite networks are composed of two types of nodes and there are no links between nodes of the same type. Thus the study of epidemic spread and control on such networks is relevant to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). When entire…
Efficient testing and vaccination protocols are critical aspects of epidemic management. To study the optimal allocation of limited testing and vaccination resources in a heterogeneous contact network of interacting susceptible, recovered,…
Traditional epidemic models consider that individual processes occur at constant rates. That is, an infected individual has a constant probability per unit time of recovering from infection after contagion. This assumption certainly fails…
Risk-driven behavior provides a feedback mechanism through which individuals both shape and are collectively affected by an epidemic. We introduce a general and flexible compartmental model to study the effect of heterogeneity in the…
Face mask use by the general public for limiting the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic is controversial, though increasingly recommended, and the potential of this intervention is not well understood. We develop a compartmental model for…
Epidemiological models for the spread of pathogens in a population are usually only able to describe a single pathogen. This makes their application unrealistic in cases where multiple pathogens with similar symptoms are spreading…
Background: There is limited information about the role of different age groups, particularly subgroups of school-age children and younger adults in propagating influenza epidemics. Methods: For a communicable disease outbreak, some…
Vaccination policies play a central role in public health interventions and models are often used to assess the effectiveness of these policies. Many vaccines are leaky, in which case the observed vaccine effectiveness depends on the force…
We study the spreading of cooperative infections in an empirical temporal network of contacts between people, including health care workers and patients, in a hospital. The system exhibits a phase transition leading to one or several…
A critical question in epidemic control concerns the minimal requirements for a vaccination campaign to effectively halt a contagion process. However, control measures can inadvertently trigger resurgence dynamics, driven by a reservoir of…
In this paper, we analyze the temporal evolution of the age-dependent force of infection and incidence of rubella, after the introduction of a very specific vaccination programme in a previously nonvaccinated population where rubella was in…