Abstract
BackgroundPeople change their behaviour during an epidemic. Infectious members of a population may reduce the number of contacts they make with other people because of the physical effects of their illness and possibly because of public health announcements asking them to do so in order to decrease the number of new infections, while susceptible members of the population may reduce the number of contacts they make in order to try to avoid becoming infected.MethodsWe consider a simple epidemic model in which susceptible and infectious members respond to a disease outbreak by reducing contacts by different fractions and analyze the effect of such contact reductions on the size of the epidemic. We assume constant fractional reductions, without attempting to consider the way in which susceptible members might respond to information about the epidemic.ResultsWe are able to derive upper and lower bounds for the final size of an epidemic, both for simple and staged progression models.ConclusionsThe responses of uninfected and infected individuals in a disease outbreak are different, and this difference affects estimates of epidemic size.
Highlights
During the course of an epidemic, there are changes in behaviour which have an effect on the transmission of infection
It would be more realistic to assume that the rate or amount of behavioural change, at least for uninfected members of the population, is dependent on some information about the extent of the epidemic, perhaps the number of infectious people or the total number of reported disease deaths
Behavioural changes are an essential aspect of the course of an epidemic
Summary
During the course of an epidemic, there are changes in behaviour which have an effect on the transmission of infection. Our purpose is to estimate the effect that given reductions in contacts have on the final size of an epidemic, without trying to model the factors that might cause such reductions. It would be more realistic to assume that the rate or amount of behavioural change, at least for uninfected members of the population, is dependent on some information about the extent of the epidemic, perhaps the number of infectious people or the total number of reported disease deaths.
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