Effect of immunization through vaccination on the SIS epidemic spreading model

TL;DR

This paper studies how vaccination affects the SIS epidemic model, showing that a critical vaccination threshold can lead to disease extinction even with high infection rates.

Contribution

It introduces a modified SIS model incorporating vaccination as a dilution process and identifies a critical vaccination fraction for disease extinction.

Findings

A new disease-free state emerges when vaccination exceeds a critical threshold.

The critical vaccination threshold increases with infection rate but approaches an asymptotic limit.

Disease extinction is guaranteed above the asymptotic vaccination level regardless of infection rate.

Abstract

We analyze the susceptible-infected-susceptible model for epidemic spreading in which a fraction of the individuals become immune by vaccination. This process is understood as a dilution by vaccination, which decreases the fraction of the susceptible individuals. For a nonzero fraction of vaccinated individuals, the model predicts a new state in which the disease spreads but eventually becomes extinct. The new state emerges when the fraction of vaccinated individuals is greater than a critical value. The model predicts that this critical value increases as one increases the infection rate reaching an asymptotic value, which is strictly less than the unity. Above this asymptotic value, the extinction occurs no matter how large the infection rate is.