How big is an outbreak likely to be? Methods for epidemic final-size calculation
2014-03-07T15:34:30Z (GMT)
by
Epidemic models have become a routinely used
tool to inform policy on infectious disease. A
particular interest at the moment is the use of
computationally intensive inference to parametrize
these models. In this context, numerical efficiency
is critically important. We consider methods for
evaluating the probability mass function of the total
number of infections over the course of a stochastic
epidemic, with a focus on homogeneous finite
populations, but also considering heterogeneous and
large populations. Relevant methods are reviewed
critically, with existing and novel extensions also
presented. We provide code in MATLAB and a
systematic comparison of numerical efficiency.