A Three-Scale Network Model for the Early Growth Dynamics of 2014 West Africa Ebola Epidemic

Conclusions Our model demonstrates that sub-exponential growth is a possible long-term trend if community mixing is limited, and provides predictions on how changes in transmission rates will result in decreases in the growth of the epidemic. Our results suggest that limiting community mixing over this scale would be an important consideration while designing epidemic control strategies. Community mixing sizes consistent with model fits of the data are quite small, with 100 to 1000 individuals. It is especially important to prevent the seeding of the outbreak into new communities, as the diffusion of transmission chains into new communities is what maintains the exponential growth of the epidemic.
Source: PLOS Currents Outbreaks - Category: Epidemiology Authors: Source Type: research