Epidemics on networks: Reducing disease transmission using health emergency declarations and peer communication

Azizi, Asma; Montalvo, Cesar; Espinoza, Baltazar; Kang, Yun; Castillo-Chavez, Carlos

The results of the infection-awareness model show that Scale-free networks support a fastest rate of infection with the impact of awareness having the lowest effect on transmission. Small-world and Erd} os-R enyi networks became less effective at disease transmission, and the role of information via aware individuals had a stronger impact in reducing transmission, Fig. (4) . These result are somewhat similar to those obtained by Chowell et al. (Chowell & Castillo-Chavez, 2003) and Moreno et al. (Moreno et al., 2002) as they studied the rate of infection rate of growth on an SIR model over Small-world and Scale-free networks, in the absence of awareness. These researchers observed that the spread of infection on Scale-free complex networks is faster than in a Small-world one. Pastor et al. and Dezs} o et al. (Dezs} o & Barab asi, 2002) focused on identifying the best strategy that can be used to control (reduce) an epidemic peak on a scale-free network. They concluded that in order to control infection public health workers needed to immunize the hubs at an early stage. Our results are somewhat related, that is, we find that in order to control an infection, public health workers need to start awareness spread soon, that is, before hubs play the role of super-spreaders.