Mathematical Modeling of
Infectious Diseases
(Model SIR)
Dr. Zoya Khalid
[email protected]
Mathematical Modeling of Infectious Diseases: Issues
and Approaches
• A disease is infectious if the causative agent, whether a virus, bacterium,
protozoa, or toxin, can be passed from one host to another through modes of
transmission such as:
• direct physical contact,
• airborne droplets,
• water or food, disease vectors,
• or mother to newborn.
Mathematical Modeling of Infectious Diseases:
Issues and Approaches
• The objective of a mathematical model of an infectious disease is to describe the
transmission process of the disease, which can be defined generally as follows:
• when infectious individuals are introduced into a population of susceptible,
• the disease is passed to other individuals through its modes of transmission thus spreading in
the population.
• An infected individual may remain asymptomatic at the early stage of infection, only later
developing clinical symptoms and being diagnosed as a disease case.
• If the number of cases rises above the usual average within a short period of time, a disease
outbreak occurs. When the disease spreads quickly to many people, it is an epidemic
Mathematical Modeling of Infectious Diseases:
Issues and Approaches
• Infected individuals recover from infection, either through treatment or due to the action of the
immune system, and gain various degrees of acquired immunity against reinfection.
• When the pool of susceptible individuals is sufficiently depleted, new infections will cease and the
epidemic slows down and stops.
• If fresh susceptibles are added to the population, either from birth or migration, or if reinfection
occurs easily, the epidemic may persist and the infection may remain in the population over a
long period of time
Mathematical Modeling of Infectious Diseases:
Issues and Approaches
• Facing an imminent epidemic, public health authorities will be looking for answers to the
following important questions:
1. How severe will the epidemic be? The severity can be measured in two different ways:
(a) Total number of infected people who may require medical care.
(b) Maximum number of infected people at any given time.
2. How long will it last? When will it peak? What will be its time course?
3. How effective will quarantine or vaccination be?
4. What quantity of vaccine or anti-viral drugs should be stockpiled?
5. What are effective measures to contain, control, and eradicate an endemic disease?
• Partial answers may be obtained using a variety of approaches. Mathematical modeling
has proven to be an important tool in assisting public health authorities to make
informed decisions.
Why Mathematical Modelling ?
• This brings us to the obvious question: why is mathematical modeling of infectious diseases
useful?
• Part of the answer is that traditional methods using experimental and statistical approaches may
not be adequate for various reasons:
Mathematical modeling
• Mathematical modelling is the process of describing a real world problem in
mathematical terms, usually in the form of equations, and then using these equations
both to help understand the original problem, and also to discover new features about
the problem.
• Mathematical modeling can provide an understanding of the underlying mechanisms of
disease transmission and spread, help to pinpoint key factors in the disease
transmission process, suggest effective control and preventive measures, and provide
an estimate for the severity and potential scale of the epidemic.
Mathematical modeling
Mathematical modeling
Mathematical modeling
• There is always a trade-off in mathematical modeling between more realistic and therefore more
complex models and our ability to analyze the model mathematically and obtain useful
information for interpretation.
• Advancement in mathematical theory and methodology often allows us to successfully use more
realistic models. When using mathematical models to analyze or interpret disease data, it is not
always true that a more realistic model will do better.
• Part of the reason is that more realistic models incorporate a greater degree of biological
complexity and hence introduce more model parameters. With the same dataset, it may be more
difficult to estimate all the parameter values for a more complex model compared to a simpler
model. The result might be a greater degree of uncertainty in model outcomes.
Mathematical modeling
Mathematical modeling
Mathematical modeling
Deterministic Epidemic Models:
Compartmental Approach
• We first partition the host population into mutually exclusive groups –
compartments – according to the natural history of the disease. For a simple
infectious disease, possible compartments may be:
• S : susceptible hosts, I : infectious hosts, R : recovered hosts.
Transmission Process
• In the transfer diagram, the arrows indicate movements of individuals among
compartments. The term “removal” includes loss of individuals through death or
out-migration
Transfer Diagram
• The goal of modeling is to track the number of hosts in each of the three
compartments at any given time t, and we denote these numbers by S(t), I(t), and
R(t) accordingly.
• To set up the compartmental model, we consider a small time interval [t, t + Δt]
and the net change in the number of individuals in each compartment. In the
transfer diagram, the arrows indicate the direction of individual movement.
• The net change of the number of hosts in a compartment is the number coming
into the compartment minus the number leaving the compartment during the
time interval
Transfer Diagram
Transfer Diagram
An Example: Kermack–McKendrick Model
• To demonstrate how various rates in equation (1.2) may depend on S(t), I(t), and
R(t), we make the following hypotheses about the transmission process of an
infectious disease and its host population:
An Example: Kermack–McKendrick Model
An Example: Kermack–McKendrick Model
An Example: Kermack–McKendrick Model
Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE)
• Substituting all terms in (1.2) by our mathematical descriptions, we obtain the
following system of differential equations:
Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE)
• In the model, functions S(t), I(t), and R(t) are variables. Since they denote the
number of people, they are expected to take nonnegative values. Constants λ and
γ are model parameters, and they are assumed to be nonnegative since they
denote rate constants.
• If the values of model parameters λ and γ are known, then for each set of initial
conditions S0 and I0, model (1.3)–(1.5) has a unique solution (S(t), I(t), R(t)) that
produces a prediction for the time course of the epidemic for t > 0. Here t = 0
marks the beginning of the epidemic.
Ordinary Differential Equations (ODE)
Solution Curve
Population
Days
Reference
