Inference and control of the nosocomial transmission of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus

Pei, Sen; Morone, Flaviano; Liljeros, Fredrik; Makse, Hernán; Shaman, Jeffrey L

In the model, transmission occurs on the substrate of a time-varying contact network, which is constructed using the actual hospitalization records from 66 hospitals in Stockholm County, Sweden. In this contact network, nodes represent uniquely labeled patients, connected by undirected links among individuals sharing a ward at a given time. The rationale behind this network construction approach is that, if two patients stay in the same ward simultaneously, the shared healthcare personnel may facilitate transmission between them. The structure of the contact network is relatively stable over time, as indicated by the degree distributions of the weekly aggregated networks ( Figure 1D ). In particular, the degree distributions can be well fitted by a Weibull distribution, PðkÞ ¼ abk bÀ1 e Àak b , where a ¼ 6:15 Â 10 À4 (95% CI: 5:96 Â 10 À4 À 6:34 Â 10 À4 ), b ¼ 2:13 (95% CI: 2:12 À 2:14) (R 2 ¼ 0:95).