 |
Center for Nonlinear Studies |
Households play an important role in the transmission of infectious diseases due to the close contact therein. Here, we use a disease transmission model that incorporates demographic changes in household sizes to study the long-term transmission dynamics of measles in communities with varying household size distributions. We explore the impact of incorporating both household- and age-structured mixing on the dynamic properties of the transmission model and compare these dynamics across different household size distributions. Our analysis, based on the household and age-structured model, shows that communities with larger household sizes require higher vaccination thresholds and bear a greater burden of infections. In addition, simulations of endemic transmission of measles within a hypothetical population formulated using aggregated world demographic data suggest the decline in household size, in addition to increasing vaccination coverage, could have had a significant impact on the incidence of measles over time.
Host: Andrey Lokhov, T-5