Suppression of epidemic outbreaks with heavy-tailed contact dynamics

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that heavy-tailed contact dynamics can significantly suppress epidemic outbreaks by reducing transmissibility, with potential for complete suppression under strong heterogeneity.

Contribution

It provides analytical and numerical evidence that temporal heterogeneity in contact patterns can inhibit epidemic spread, including conditions for complete suppression.

Findings

Heavy-tailed contact dynamics reduce disease transmissibility.

Strong heterogeneity can lead to vanishing transmissibility.

Suppression occurs regardless of contact network structure.

Abstract

We study the epidemic spreading process following contact dynamics with heavy-tailed waiting time distributions. We show both analytically and numerically that the temporal heterogeneity of contact dynamics can significantly suppress the disease's transmissibility, hence the size of epidemic outbreak, obstructing the spreading process. Furthermore, when the temporal heterogeneity is strong enough, one obtains the vanishing transmissibility for any finite recovery time and regardless of underlying structure of contacts, the condition of which was derived.