Non massive immunization to contain spreading on complex networks

TL;DR

This paper explores effective epidemic containment strategies on complex networks that do not require massive immunization, focusing on targeted, minimal immunization approaches that alter epidemic thresholds.

Contribution

It demonstrates that moderate immunization can induce finite epidemic thresholds and change the transition nature in scale-free networks, enabling containment with minimal immunized fractions.

Findings

Finite epidemic thresholds achieved with small immunized fractions

Targeted immunization strategies outperform random approaches

Network functionality preserved with non massive immunization

Abstract

Optimal strategies for epidemic containment are focused on dismantling the contact network through effective immunization with minimal costs. However, network fragmentation is seldom accessible in practice and may present extreme side effects. In this work, we investigate the epidemic containment immunizing population fractions far below the percolation threshold. We report that moderate and weakly supervised immunizations can lead to finite epidemic thresholds of the susceptible-infected-susceptible model on scale-free networks by changing the nature of the transition from a specific-motif to a collectively driven process. Both pruning of efficient spreaders and increasing of their mutual separation are necessary for a collective activation. Fractions of immunized vertices needed to eradicate the epidemics which are much smaller than the percolation thresholds were observed for a broad spectrum of real networks considering targeted or acquaintance immunization strategies. Our work contributes for the construction of optimal containment, preserving network functionality through non massive and viable immunization strategies.