Infectious Disease Spread Analysis Using the SIR Model and the Truncated Model with Applications to SARS and Novel Influenza

• Activity Number: 42
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Sunday, August 1, 2010 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Hideo Hirose*+
• Companies: Kyushu Institute of Technology
• Keywords: SIR model ; multi-agent model ; truncated model ; infectious disease spread ; population size

Abstract

Infectious disease spread is often analyzed by the two methods: the SIR model and the multi-agent simulation (MAS) model. Although the MAS seems to be useful because it can, under a variety of initial and boundary conditions, deal with detailed simulations for artificial social network models, we cannot use it with ease because the specific real world is too complex to express. On the contrary, the SIR is still attractive because of its simple scheme and adaptability to real cases. Comparing the simulation results using the two models, we have found that they are consistent with each other. Thus, we use the SIR model for real two cases: SARS in 2003 and the novel influenza A(H1N1) in 2009. Using this, we can roughly predict the final infected population size at early stages, while the truncated model provides stable estimates only at later stages.