Epidemic spreading and control strategies in spatial modular network

• Main Authors: Gross, Bnaya, Havlin, Shlomo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 06-09-2020
• Subjects: Physics - Physics and Society
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2009.02806

Epidemic spread on networks is one of the most studied dynamics in network
science and has important implications in real epidemic scenarios. Nonetheless,
the dynamics of real epidemics and how it is affected by the underline
structure of the infection channels are still not fully understood. Here we
apply the SIR model and study analytically and numerically the epidemic spread
on a recently developed spatial modular model imitating the structure of cities
in a country. The model assumes that inside a city the infection channels
connect many different locations, while the infection channels between cities
are less and usually directly connect only a few nearest neighbor cities in a
two-dimensional plane. We find that the model experience two epidemic
transitions. The first lower threshold represents a local epidemic spread
within a city but not to the entire country and the second higher threshold
represents a global epidemic in the entire country. Based on our analytical
solution we proposed several control strategies and how to optimize them. We
also show that while control strategies can successfully control the disease,
early actions are essentials to prevent the disease global spread.