Cooperative epidemics on multiplex networks

TL;DR

This paper analytically investigates how two diseases co-spread on multiplex networks, revealing phase transitions and thresholds influenced by cooperative interactions, with implications for understanding complex epidemic dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces an exact analytical framework for symmetric coinfection on multiplex networks, accounting for layer overlap and cooperation effects, and characterizes phase transitions and cluster properties.

Findings

Identification of epidemic thresholds and phase diagrams.

Discovery of a tricritical point with transition type change.

Comparison between coinfected and viable clusters.

Abstract

The spread of one disease, in some cases, can stimulate the spreading of another infectious disease. Here, we treat analytically a symmetric coinfection model for spreading of two diseases on a two-layer multiplex network. We allow layer overlapping, but we assume that each layer is random and locally loopless. Infection with one of the diseases increases the probability of getting infected with the other. Using the generating function method, we calculate exactly the fraction of individuals infected with both diseases (so-called coinfected clusters) in the stationary state, as well as the epidemic spreading thresholds and the phase diagram of the model.With increasing cooperation, we observe a tricritical point and the type of transition changes from continuous to hybrid. Finally, we compare the coinfected clusters in the case of cooperating diseases with the so-called "viable" clusters in networks with dependencies.