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Household structure and infectious disease transmission
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House, Thomas A. and Keeling, Matthew James (2009) Household structure and infectious disease transmission. Epidemiology and Infection, Vol.137 (No.5). pp. 654-661. doi:10.1017/S0950268808001416 ISSN 0950-2688.
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0950268808001416
Abstract
One of the central tenets of modern infectious disease epidemiology is that an understanding of heterogeneities, both in host demography and transmission, allows control to be efficiently optimized. Due to the strong interactions present, households are one of the most important heterogeneities to consider, both in terms of predicting epidemic severity and as a target for intervention. We consider these effects in the context of pandemic influenza in Great Britain, and find that there is significant local (ward-level) variation in the basic reproductive ratio, with some regions predicted to suffer 50% faster growth rate of infection than the mean. Childhood vaccination was shown to be highly effective at controlling an epidemic, generally outperforming random vaccination and substantially reducing the variation between regions; only nine out of over 10 000 wards did not obey this rule and these can be identified as demographically atypical regions. Since these benefits of childhood vaccination are a product of correlations between household size and number of dependent children in the household, our results are qualitatively robust for a variety of disease scenarios.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||
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Subjects: | R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine | ||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Life Sciences (2010- ) > Biological Sciences ( -2010) Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine > Science > Mathematics |
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Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Households -- Great Britain, Communicable diseases -- Transmission -- Great Britain, Epidemiology -- Research, Vaccination of children -- Great Britain | ||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Epidemiology and Infection | ||||
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press | ||||
ISSN: | 0950-2688 | ||||
Official Date: | May 2009 | ||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | Vol.137 | ||||
Number: | No.5 | ||||
Page Range: | pp. 654-661 | ||||
DOI: | 10.1017/S0950268808001416 | ||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||
Funder: | Sixth Framework Programme (European Commission) (FP6), Wellcome Trust (London, England) | ||||
Grant number: | 513715 (SFP) |
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