Elsevier

Epidemics

Volume 3, Issues 3–4, September–December 2011, Pages 152-158
Epidemics

Incorporating population dynamics into household models of infectious disease transmission

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epidem.2011.05.001Get rights and content
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Abstract

Most household models of disease transmission assume static household distributions. Although this is a reasonable simplification for assessing vaccination strategies at a single point in time or over the course of an outbreak, it has considerable drawbacks for assessing long term vaccination policies or for predicting future changes in immunity. We demonstrate that household models that include births, deaths and movement between households can show dramatically different patterns of infection and immunity to static population models. When immunity is assumed to be life-long, the pattern of births by household size is the key driver of infection, suggesting that the influx of susceptibles has most impact on infection risk in the household. In a comparison of 12 countries, we show that both the crude birth rate and the mean household size affect the risk of infection in households.

Highlights

► We add births, deaths and human movement to a household model of disease spread. ► We show that demographic movements can affect patterns of infection and immunity. ► When immunity is life-long, births are the key driver of household immunity. ► Household sizes and crude birth rates influence household infection patterns.

Keywords

Mathematical model
Demography
Family

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