2023/04/03 by Anicet Mougabe-Peurkor, Mougabe-Peurkor, Anicet, Ibrahima Dramé +5
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Mathematics · Medicine · #60J80 #60J85 #92D30 #COVID-19 epidemiological studies #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #FOS: Mathematics #Mathematical and Theoretical Epidemiology and Ecology Models #Probability (math.PR)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2304.01379
openalex publication_date 2023/04/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
This paper studies the distribution function of the time of extinction of a subcritical epidemic, when a large enough proportion of the population has been immunized and/or the infectivity of the infectious individuals has been reduced, so that the effective reproduction number is less than one. We do that for a SIR/SEIR model, where infectious individuals have an infection age dependent infectivity, as in the model introduced in the 1927 seminal paper of Kermack and McKendrick. Our main conclusion is that simplifying the model as an ODE SIR model, as it is largely done in the epidemics literature, introduces a biais toward shorter extinction time.