The interplay between disease spreading and awareness diffusion in multiplex networks

What is it about?

The construction of disease spreading models is crucial in epidemiological research. During the model building process, more and more realistic factors are incorporated into the model. The interplay between disease and awareness has been extensively studied in static networks. However, most networks in reality will evolve over time. Based on this, we propose a novel epidemiological model in multiplex networks. In this model, the disease spreading layer is a time-varying network generated by the activity-driven model, while the awareness diffusion layer is a static network, and the heterogeneity of individual infection and recovery ability is considered.

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Photo by CDC on Unsplash

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Our findings have some reference values for the government to formulate epidemic prevention and control strategies. During the epidemic period, policy makers should limit mass activities and public places with large flow of people and isolate sick individuals in time to avoid greater transmission risks caused by population mobility. On the other hand, in order to control the scale of epidemic infection, we should focus on children, the elderly, and other groups with weak recovery ability and minimize the emergence of super-spreaders.