Spatial Spread of Epidemic Diseases in Geographical Settings: Seasonal Influenza Epidemics in Puerto Rico

TL;DR

This paper develops deterministic partial differential equation models to analyze how spatial heterogeneity affects the spread of seasonal influenza in Puerto Rico, validated with real epidemic data.

Contribution

It introduces spatially explicit PDE models for influenza spread and compares them with actual epidemic data from Puerto Rico, highlighting the role of spatial heterogeneity.

Findings

Models effectively capture spatial spread patterns.

Spatial heterogeneity significantly influences epidemic dynamics.

Good agreement between model predictions and real data.

Abstract

Deterministic models are developed for the spatial spread of epidemic diseases in geographical settings. The models are focused on outbreaks that arise from a small number of infected hosts imported into sub-regions of the geographical settings. The goal is to understand how spatial heterogeneity influences the transmission dynamics of the susceptible and infected populations. The models consist of systems of partial differential equations with diffusion terms describing the spatial spread of the underlying microbial infectious agents. The model is compared with real data from seasonal influenza epidemics in Puerto Rico.