The Role of Geographic Spreaders in Infectious Pattern Formation and Front Propagation Speeds

Abstract

The pattern formation and spatial spread of infectious populations are investigated using a kernel-based Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered (SIR) model applicable across a wide range of basic reproduction numbers $R_o$. The focus is on the role of geographic spreaders defined here as a portion of the infected population ($\varphi$) experiencing high mobility between identical communities. The spatial organization of the infected population and invasive front speeds ($c_{max}$) are determined when the infections are randomly initiated in space within multiple communities. For small but finite $\varphi$, scaling analysis in 1-dimension and simulation results in 2-dimensions suggest that $c_{max}\sim (1-\varphi )\gamma (R_o-1)\sigma$, where $\gamma$ is the inverse of the infectious duration, and ${\sigma }^2$ is the variance of the spatial kernel describing mobility of long-distance spreaders across communities. Hence, $c_{max}$ is not significantly affected by the small $\varphi$ though reductions in $\varphi$ act as retardation factors to the attainment of $c_{max}$. The $\sigma$ determines the spatial organization of infections across communities. When $\sigma >5dr$ (long-distance mobility, where $dr$ is the minimum spatial extent defining adjacent communities), the infectious population will experience a transient but spatially coherent pattern with a wavelength that can be derived from the spreading kernel properties.

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• Invasion threshold in heterogeneous metapopulation networks
• Size and timescale of epidemics in the SIR framework