Eur. Phys. J. B 50, 209-214 (2006)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2006-00136-7

Effects of population mixing on the spread of SIR epidemics

¹ Department of Mathematics, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, L2S 3A1, Canada
² Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, N1G 2W1, Canada

Corresponding author: ^a hfuks@brocku.ca

Received: 17 October 2005
Revised: 11 December 2005
Published online: 12 April 2006

Abstract

We study dynamics of spread of epidemics of SIR type in a realistic spatially-explicit geographical region, Southern and Central Ontario, using census data obtained from Statistics Canada, and examine the role of population mixing in epidemic processes. Our model incorporates the random nature of disease transmission, the discreteness and heterogeneity of distribution of host population.We find that introduction of a long-range interaction destroys spatial correlations very easily if neighbourhood sizes are homogeneous. For inhomogeneous neighbourhoods, very strong long-range coupling is required to achieve a similar effect. Our work applies to the spread of influenza during a single season.