Effect of the disorder heterogeneity on the disease spreading.

CAMILA BUONO; FEDERICO VAZQUEZ; PABLO A. MACRI; LIDIA A. BRAUNSTEIN

Trieste

Workshop; Workshop on physical virology; 2012

The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP)

We explore how heterogeneity in the intensity of interactions between people affects epidemic spreading. For that, we study the susceptible-infected-susceptible model on a complex network,where a link connecting individuals i and j is endowed with an infection rate βij = λwij proportional to the intensity of their contact wij , with a distribution P (wij ). We find a rare region effects with a slow approach to extinction. This effects are caused by isolated small groups of highly interacting individuals, which keep epidemic alive for very long times. A mean-field approximation and a percolation approach capture with very good accuracy the transition from weak to strong disorder.