Approximation of epidemics by inhomogeneous birth-and-death processes

Damian Clancy and Philip O'Neill

Stochastic Processes and their Applications, 1998, vol. 73, issue 2, 233-245

Abstract: This paper is concerned with the approximation of a class of open population epidemic models by time-inhomogeneous birth-and-death processes. In particular, we consider models in which the population of susceptibles behaves in the absence of infection as a general branching process. It is shown that for a large initial number of susceptibles, the process of infectives behaves approximately as a time-inhomogeneous birth-and-death process. Strong convergence results are obtained over an increasing sequence of time intervals [0,tN], where N is the initial number of susceptibles and tN-->[infinity] as N-->[infinity].

Keywords: Epidemic; Coupling; Birth-and-death; process; Inhomogeneous; birth-and-death; process; General; branching; process (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1998
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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