Modeling contagious disease spreading

TL;DR

This paper introduces the Ising-SIR model, a mathematical framework for simulating contagious disease spread via airborne and contact transmission, revealing different growth dynamics and pattern formations.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel Ising-SIR model that incorporates both airborne and contact transmission, providing new insights into disease spread mechanisms and spatial patterns.

Findings

Growth exponent near two in contact transmission matches empirical data.

Different spreading mechanisms lead to distinct growth dynamics.

Model predicts diverse spatiotemporal patterns observed in real outbreaks.

Abstract

An understanding of the disease spreading phenomenon based on a mathematical model is extremely needed for the implication of the correct policy measures to contain the disease propagation. Here, we report a new model namely the Ising-SIR model describing contagious disease spreading phenomena including both airborne and direct contact disease transformations. In the airborne case, a susceptible agent can catch the disease either from the environment or its infected neighbors whereas in the second case, the agent can be infected only through close contact with its infected neighbors. We have performed Monte Carlo simulations on a square lattice using periodic boundary conditions to investigate the dynamics of disease spread. The simulations demonstrate that the mechanism of disease spreading plays a significant role in the growth dynamics and leads to different growth exponent. In the direct contact disease spreading mechanism, the growth exponent is nearly equal to two for some model parameters which agrees with earlier empirical observations. In addition, the model predicts various types of spatiotemporal patterns that can be observed in nature.