The Role of Geographic Spreaders in Infectious Pattern Formation and Front Propagation Speeds

Li, Shuolin; Henriquez, Craig; Katul, Gabriel

The pattern formation and spatial spread of infectious populations are investigated using a kernel-based Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered (SIR) model applicable across a wide range of basic reproduction numbers $R_o$. The focus is on the role of geographic spreaders defined here as a portion of the infected population ($\phi$) experiencing high mobility between identical communities. The spatial organization of the infected population and invasive front speeds ($c_{max}$) are determined when the infections are randomly initiated in space within multiple communities. For small but finite $\phi$, scaling analysis in 1-dimension and simulation results in 2-dimensions suggest that $c_{max}\sim (1-\phi) \gamma (R_o-1) \sigma$, where $\gamma$ is the inverse of the infectious duration, and $\sigma^2$ is the variance of the spatial kernel describing mobility of long-distance spreaders across communities. Hence, $c_{max}$ is not significantly affected by the small $\phi$ though reductions in $\phi$ act as retardation factors to the attainment of $c_{max}$. The $\sigma$ determines the spatial organization of infections across communities. When $\sigma>5dr$ (long-distance mobility, where $dr$ is the minimum spatial extent defining adjacent communities), the infectious population will experience a transient but spatially coherent pattern with a wavelength that can be derived from the spreading kernel properties.