Spatial and temporal dynamics of infected populations: the Mexican epidemic

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the spatial and temporal spread of the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic in Mexico using the SIR model and its generalizations to understand epidemic dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized SIR model to describe the spatial spread of the epidemic, extending traditional models to incorporate spatial dynamics.

Findings

The model fits the Mexican H1N1 data well.

Predictions of epidemic spread are consistent with observed data.

Spatial dynamics can be effectively modeled with the generalized SIR approach.

Abstract

Recently the A/H1N1-2009 virus pandemic appeared in Mexico and in other nations. We present a study of this pandemic in the Mexican case using the SIR model to describe epidemics. This model is one of the simplest models but it has been a successful description of some epidemics of closed populations. We consider the data for the Mexican case and use the SIR model to make some predictions. Then, we generalize the SIR model in order to describe the spatial dynamics of the disease. We make a study of the spatial and temporal spread of the infected population with model parameters that are consistent with temporal SIR model parameters obtained by fitting to the Mexican case.