Social distancing strategies against disease spreading

LUCAS D. VALDEZ; CAMILA BUONO; P. A. MACRI; L. A. BRAUNSTEIN

Perspectives and Challenges in Statistical Physics and Complex Systems

Word Scientific

Lugar: Singapur; Año: 2012;

The recurrent infectious diseases and their increasing impact on the society haspromoted the study of strategies to slow down the epidemic spreading. In thisreview we outline the applications of percolation theory to describe strategiesagainst epidemic spreading on complex networks. We give a general outlookof the relation between link percolation and the susceptible-infected-recoveredmodel, and introduce the node void percolation process to describe the dilutionof the network composed by healthy individual, i.e, the network that sustainthe functionality of a society. Then, we survey two strategies: the quencheddisorder strategy where an heterogeneous distribution of contact intensities isinduced in society, and the intermittent social distancing strategy where healthindividuals are persuaded to avoid contact with their neighbors for intermittentperiods of time. Using percolation tools, we show that both strategies mayhalt the epidemic spreading. Finally, we discuss the role of the transmissibility,i.e, the effective probability to transmit a disease, on the performance of thestrategies to slow down the epidemic spreading.