Variability in a Community-Structured SIS Epidemiological Model

We study an SIS epidemiological model of a population partitioned into groups referred to as communities, households, or patches. The system is studied using stochastic spatial simulations, as well as a system of ordinary differential equations describing moments of the distribution of infectious individuals. The ODE model explicitly includes the population size, as well as the variability in infection levels among communities and the variability among stochastic realizations of the process. Results are compared with an earlier moment-based model which assumed infinite population size and no variance among realizations of the process. We find that although the amount of localized (as opposed to global) contact in the model has little effect on the equilibrium infection level, it does affect both the timing and magnitude of both types of variability in infection level.