Hand-hygiene mitigation strategies against global disease spreading through the air transportation network

Christos Nicolaides; Demetris Avraam; Luis Cueto-Felgueroso; Marta C. González; Ruben Juanes

We assume a flu-type disease, where the recovery rate is µ = 1/4 days -1 (i.e. on average each infected individual recovers after four days) and the reproductive number is R 0 = 3 (i.e. on average each infected individual transmits the disease to three other individuals). The infection rate for the SIR model is β = µR 0 which is equal to the infection rate β 1 for the processes 1 as effective hand washing has been proven to be able to prevent around 50-70% of infections 37 . The hand washing effectiveness rate which indicates the average time that washed hands become again contaminated is set to θ = 1/1.5 hours -1 (i.e. is the rate to change from 'washed' to 'dirty' state). We also consider that mostly 1 over 5 people in an airport have cleaned hands at any given moment in time (i.e. 20% of airport population). This is equivalent to hand washing engagement rate among the non-cleaned individuals equal to p = 0.12 per hour (i.e. every hour about 12% of the non-cleaned individuals are washing their hands). We declare this hand washing engagement rate (p = 0.12 hours -1 ) as the status quo (see next section). We vary p to analyze and quantify the effect of hand washing engagement on different scenarios of epidemic spreading.