Year: 2011
Type: article
Abstract: OBJECTIVE: Study the influence of household contact structure on the spread of an influenza-like illness. Examine whether changes to in-home care giving arrangements can significantly affect the household transmission counts. METHOD: We simulate two different behaviors for the symptomatic person; either s/he remains at home in contact with everyone else in the household or s/he remains at home in contact with only the primary caregiver in the household. The two different cases are referred to as full mixing and single caregiver, respectively. RESULTS: The results show that the household's cumulative transmission count is lower in case of a single caregiver configuration than in the full mixing case. The household transmissions vary almost linearly with the household size in both single caregiver and full mixing cases. However the difference in household transmissions due to the difference in household structure grows with the household size especially in case of moderate flu. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that details about human behavior and household structure do matter in epidemiological models. The policy of home isolation of the sick has significant effect on the household transmission count depending upon the household size.
Source: PLoS ONE
Institution: Virginia Tech
Language: English
Subfield: Epidemiology
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,382
Awards: G1028498055, SDCI NMI New: From Desktops to Clouds -- A Middleware for Next Generation Network Science, G1594896353, Collaborative Research: NECO: A Market-Driven Approach to Dynamic Spectrum Sharing, Laser-induced time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopic characterization of Ce, Er doped YAG (Yttrium Aluminium Garnet) crystals, CAREER: Cross-layer optimization in Cognitive Radio Networks in the Physical interference model based on SINR constraints: Algorithmic Foundations, Collaborative Research: Modeling Interaction Between Individual Behavior, Social Networks And Public Policy To Support Public Health Epidemiology., Synthetic Information Systems for Better Informing Public Health Policymakers, Collaborative Research: Coupled Models of Diffusion and Individual Behavior Over Extremely Large Social Networks, Collaborative Research: NeTS-NBD: An Integrated Approach to Computing Capacity and Developing Efficient Cross-Layer Protocols for Wireless Networks, G6207545184, G6541015203, NetSE: Large: Collaborative Research: Contagion in large socio-communication networks, TAS::89 0227::TAS RECOVERY; NEW-EARLY CAREER; RECOVERY ACT -DIFFUSION ON COMPLEX NETWORKS: ALGORITHMIC FOUNDATIONS; PI - ANIL VULLIKANTIA, G798432143
OpenAlex ID: W2163007015