Avian influenza epidemic recurrence and approximate stochastic models ...

• Main Author: Mata, May Anne Estrera
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: University of British Columbia 2017
• Subjects: Avian flu
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.14288/1.0347223; https://doi.library.ubc.ca/10.14288/1.0347223

This thesis is mainly concerned with avian flu epidemic recurrence, its current paradigm, and further mathematical research. Generally, this thesis aims to characterise the recurrent pattern of epidemics simulated by stochastic avian flu models using mathematical techniques. Of particular interest here are the stochastic fluctuations observed in recurrent epidemics. This thesis has two main parts. The first part presents a thorough analysis of a simple stochastic avian flu model to provide insight into the role of different transmission routes in its recurrent dynamics. Recent modelling work on avian influenza in wild bird population takes into account demographic stochasticity and highlights the importance of environmental transmission in determining the outbreak periodicity, but only for a weak between-host transmission rates. A new analytic approach is used here to determine the relative contribution of environmental and direct transmission routes to the features of recurrent epidemics. Using an ...