Spatial dynamics of airborne infectious diseases

JOURNAL OF THEORETICAL BIOLOGY

卷:297

Article

Robinson, Marguerite¹  Stilianakis, Nikolaos I.^1,2  Drossinos, Yannis¹ 

[1] European Commiss, Joint Res Ctr, I-21027 Ispra, VA, Italy

[2] Univ Erlangen Nurnberg, Dept Biometry & Epidemiol, D-91054 Erlangen, Germany

关键词: Respiratory droplets;    Influenza;    Ventilation;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.jtbi.2011.12.015

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Disease outbreaks, such as those of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in 2003 and the 2009 pandemic A(H1N1) influenza, have highlighted the potential for airborne transmission in indoor environments. Respirable pathogen-carrying droplets provide a vector for the spatial spread of infection with droplet transport determined by diffusive and convective processes. An epidemiological model describing the spatial dynamics of disease transmission is presented. The effects of an ambient airflow, as an infection control, are incorporated leading to a delay equation, with droplet density dependent on the infectious density at a previous time. It is found that small droplets (similar to 0.4 mu m) generate a negligible infectious force due to the small viral load and the associated duration they require to transmit infection. In contrast, larger droplets (similar to 4 mu m) can lead to an infectious wave propagating through a fully susceptible population or a secondary infection outbreak for a localized susceptible population. Droplet diffusion is found to be an inefficient mode of droplet transport leading to minimal spatial spread of infection. A threshold air velocity is derived, above which disease transmission is impaired even when the basic reproduction number R-0 exceeds unity. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free