2013/07/10 by Daihai He, Jonathan Dushoff, Troy Day +2 · 2 citations
Medicine · Mathematics · #Influenza Virus Research Studies #COVID-19 epidemiological studies #Viral Infections and Vectors #Pandemic #Outbreak #Epidemiology #Influenza pandemic #Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) #Demography #Geography #Incidence (geometry) #Pandemic influenza #Yield (engineering) #Econometrics #Virology #Biology #Medicine #Mathematics #Sociology #Pathology #Disease #Infectious disease (medical specialty)
paper · pdf · doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.1345
openalex publication_date 2013/07/10 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Past influenza pandemics appear to be characterized by multiple waves of incidence, but the mechanisms that account for this phenomenon remain unclear. We propose a simple epidemic model, which incorporates three factors that might contribute to the generation of multiple waves: (i) schools opening and closing, (ii) temperature changes during the outbreak, and (iii) changes in human behaviour in response to the outbreak. We fit this model to the reported influenza mortality during the 1918 pandemic in 334 UK administrative units and estimate the epidemiological parameters. We then use information criteria to evaluate how well these three factors explain the observed patterns of mortality. Our results indicate that all three factors are important but that behavioural responses had the largest effect. The parameter values that produce the best fit are biologically reasonable and yield epidemiological dynamics that match the observed data well.