Strategies to control the genital herpes epidemic

Genital herpes is a widely prevalent sexually transmitted disease. We introduce a spatial stochastic model to discuss strategies to control the epidemic. Our caricatural description suggests three different directions in order to control the epidemic. First, if the transmission rate is low enough there can be no epidemic. Second, even for a high transmission rate the epidemic will be avoided if the mean time a viral outbreak lasts in a patient is short enough. Finally, the mean time between two viral outbreaks in a patient is useful to control only for an intermediate transmission rate: if the transmission rate is high enough then there will be an epidemic even if the time between two viral outbreaks in a patient is arbitrarily long.