Systematic evaluation of the population-level effects of alternative treatment strategies on the basic reproduction number

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to evaluate how different treatment strategies influence the basic reproduction number, R0, enabling comparison and extension of effects for various control intensities.

Contribution

It introduces a systematic approach to estimate and compare the effects of treatment strategies on R0, applicable to small control values and extendable to larger controls.

Findings

Method effectively estimates treatment impact on R0.

Applicable to small control values with potential for extension.

Provides a framework for comparing multiple strategies.

Abstract

An approach to estimate the influence of the treatment-type controls on the basic reproduction number, R 0 , is proposed and elaborated. The presented approach allows one to estimate the effect of a given treatment strategy or to compare a number of different treatment strategies on the basic reproduction number. All our results are valid for sufficiently small values of the control. However, in many cases it is possible to extend this analysis to larger values of the control as was illustrated by examples.