Speaker:Fred Brauer,
University of British Columbia

Title:Simple pandemic models

Abstract:Stochastic simulation of large network models have become the standard approach to modelling epidemics and control measures, including anticipated possible pandemics. We show that simple compartmental deterministic models can give some of the predictions of such models simply and with better understanding of critical dependence on some parameters. In particular, the dependence on the initial number of infectives is critical, and this makes predictions of the amount of treatment needed for control and the number of disease cases completely unreliable. However, comparison of different control strategies is still possible. (work joint with Julien Arino, Pauline van den Driessche, James Watmough, and Jianhong Wu).