Systematic selection between age and household structure for models aimed at emerging epidemic predictions

Area of Science:

• Epidemiology
• Mathematical modeling
• Infectious disease dynamics

Background:

• Numerous epidemic models exist, complicating selection when fitting early data.
• Models with explicit age and/or household structure are essential for understanding disease spread.

Purpose of the Study:

• To systematically compare epidemic models, assessing prediction accuracy loss when omitting age or household structure.
• To guide the trade-off between model simplicity and accuracy for early epidemic assessments.

Main Methods:

• Comparative analysis of epidemic models with varying social structures (age, household).
• Evaluation of prediction accuracy for a novel directly transmissible infection without interventions.

Main Results:

• Age stratification in models is critical for accurate predictions with heterogeneous contact patterns typical of respiratory infections.
• Household structure is essential only when transmission is highly concentrated within households, indicated by the household secondary attack rate.

Conclusions:

• Age structure is a key component for accurate epidemic modeling of respiratory diseases.
• Modelers should consider household structure based on empirical transmission data to balance simplicity and accuracy.