School of Automation, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China.
Math Biosci Eng. 2012 Jan 1;9(1):147-64. doi: 10.3934/mbe.2012.9.147.
Non-pharmaceutical interventions, such as quarantine, isolation and entry screening, are usually the primary public health measures to control the spread of an emerging infectious disease through a human population. This paper proposes a multi-regional deterministic compartmental model to assess the effectiveness and implications of non-pharmaceutical interventions. The reproduction number is determined as the spectral radius of a nonnegative matrix product. Comparisons are made using the reproduction number, epidemic peaks and cumulative number of infections and mortality as indexes. Simulation results show that quarantine of suspected cases and isolation of cases with symptom are effective in reducing disease burden for multiple regions. Using entry screening strategy leads to a moderate time delay for epidemic peaks, but is of no help for preventing an epidemic breaking out. The study further shows that isolation strategy is always the best choice in the presence or absence of stringent hygiene precautions and should be given priority in combating an emerging epidemic.
非药物干预措施，如检疫、隔离和入境筛查，通常是控制新发传染病在人群中传播的主要公共卫生措施。本文提出了一个多区域确定性房室模型来评估非药物干预措施的效果和影响。繁殖数是由非负矩阵乘积的谱半径确定的。使用繁殖数、流行高峰和累积感染人数和死亡率作为指标进行比较。模拟结果表明，对疑似病例的检疫和对有症状病例的隔离，对多个地区减轻疾病负担是有效的。采用入境筛查策略会导致流行高峰出现适度的时间延迟，但对防止疫情爆发没有帮助。研究进一步表明，在存在或不存在严格卫生措施的情况下，隔离策略始终是最佳选择，应优先用于应对新发传染病。
