Information-related changes in contact patterns may trigger oscillations in the endemic prevalence of infectious diseases

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that behavioral changes driven by information on disease prevalence can induce sustained oscillations in endemic disease models, highlighting the importance of human behavior in epidemic dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a model where contact rates depend on disease prevalence information, revealing that behavior change alone can cause oscillations and potential chaos in endemic disease patterns.

Findings

Behavior-driven contact changes can cause sustained oscillations.

Information-based social behavior influences endemic disease dynamics.

Seasonal contact variations may lead to chaotic epidemic patterns.

Abstract

It is well known that behavioral changes in contact patterns may significantly affect the spread of an epidemic outbreak. Here we focus on simple endemic models for recurrent epidemics, by modelling the social contact rate as a function of the available information on the present and past disease prevalence. We show that social behaviour change alone may trigger sustained oscillations. This indicates that human behavior might be a critical explaining factor of oscillations in time-series of endemic diseases. Finally, we briefly show how the inclusion of seasonal variations in contacts may imply chaos.