Explosive epidemic transitions induced by quarantine fatigue

Abstract

Quarantine measures are one of the first lines of defense against the spread of infectious diseases. However, maintaining these measures over extended periods can be challenging due to a phenomenon known as quarantine fatigue. In this paper, we investigate the impact of quarantine fatigue on the spread of infectious diseases by using an epidemic model on random networks with cliques. In our model, susceptible individuals can be quarantined up to n times, after which they stop complying with quarantine orders due to fatigue. Our results show that quarantine fatigue may induce a regime in which increasing the probability of detecting and isolating infected individuals (along with their close contacts) could subsequently increase the expected number of cases at the end of an outbreak. Moreover, we observe that quarantine fatigue can trigger an abrupt phase transition at the critical reproduction number R0=1. Finally, we explore a scenario where a non-negligible number of individuals are infected at the beginning of an epidemic, and our results show that, depending on the value of n, an abrupt transition between a controlled epidemic and a large epidemic event can occur for R0<1.