Eur. Phys. J. B (2014) 87: 146
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2014-50098-0

Regular Article

The influence of age-age correlations on epidemic spreading in social network

Central Institute for Labour Protection, National Research Institute, 00-701 Warsaw, Poland

^a e-mail: angra@ciop.pl

Received: 11 February 2014
Received in final form: 8 May 2014
Published online: 1 July 2014

Abstract

On the basis of the experimental data concerning interactions between humans the process of epidemic spreading in a social network was investigated. It was found that number of contact and average age of nearest neighbors are highly correlated with age of an individual. The influence of those correlations on the process of epidemic spreading and effectiveness of control measures like mass immunizations campaigns was investigated. It occurs that the magnitude of epidemic is decreased and the effectiveness of target vaccination is increased.