A Simple Stochastic Model with Environmental Transmission Explains Multi-Year Periodicity in Outbreaks of Avian Flu
9 páginas, 3 figuras, 2 tablas. Avian influenza virus reveals persistent and recurrent outbreaks in North American wild waterfowl, and exhibits major outbreaks at 2–8 years intervals in duck populations. The standard susceptible-infected- recovered (SIR) framework, which includes seasonal migration...
| Published in: | PLoS ONE |
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Public Library of Science
2012
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/74636 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0028873 |
| Summary: | 9 páginas, 3 figuras, 2 tablas. Avian influenza virus reveals persistent and recurrent outbreaks in North American wild waterfowl, and exhibits major outbreaks at 2–8 years intervals in duck populations. The standard susceptible-infected- recovered (SIR) framework, which includes seasonal migration and reproduction, but lacks environmental transmission, is unable to reproduce the multi-periodic patterns of avian influenza epidemics. In this paper, we argue that a fully stochastic theory based on environmental transmission provides a simple, plausible explanation for the phenomenon of multi-year periodic outbreaks of avian flu. Our theory predicts complex fluctuations with a dominant period of 2 to 8 years which essentially depends on the intensity of environmental transmission. A wavelet analysis of the observed data supports this prediction. Furthermore, using master equations and van Kampen system-size expansion techniques, we provide an analytical expression for the spectrum of stochastic fluctuations, revealing how the outbreak period varies with the environmental transmission. Peer reviewed |
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