Modeling Dengue Outbreaks

MARCELO OTERO; DANIEL BARMAK; CLAUDIO O. DORSO; HERNÁN GUSTAVO SOLARI; MARIO NATIELLO

MATHEMATICAL BIOSCIENCES

ELSEVIER SCIENCE INC

Lugar: AMsterdam; Año: 2011 vol. 232 p. 87 - 95

0025-5564

We introduce a dengue model (SEIR) where the human individuals are treatedon an individual basis (IBM) while the mosquito population, produced by anindependent model, is treated by compartments (SEI). We study the spread ofepidemics by the sole action of the mosquito. Exponential, deterministic andexperimental distributions for the (human) exposed period are considered intwo weather scenarios, one corresponding to temperate climate and the other totropical climate. Virus circulation, final epidemic size and duration of outbreaksare considered showing that the results present little sensitivity to the statisticsfollowed by the exposed period provided the median of the distributions arein coincidence. Only the time between an introduced (imported) case and theappearance of the first symptomatic secondary case is sensitive to this distribution.We finally show that the IBM model introduced is precisely a realizationof a compartmental model, and that at least in this case, the choice betweencompartmental models or IBM is only a matter of convenience.7 Key words: epidemiology, dengue, Individual Based Model, Compartmental8 Model, stochastic