The effect of governance structures on optimal control of two-patch epidemic models.

Infectious diseases continue to pose a significant threat to the health of humans globally. While the spread of pathogens transcends geographical boundaries, the management of infectious diseases typically occurs within distinct spatial units, determined by geopolitical boundaries. The allocation of management resources within and across regions (the "governance structure") can affect epidemiological outcomes considerably, and policy-makers are often confronted with a choice between applying control measures uniformly or differentially across regions.

A Hybrid Epidemic Model to Explore Stochasticity in COVID-19 Dynamics.

The dynamic nature of the COVID-19 pandemic has demanded a public health response that is constantly evolving due to the novelty of the virus. Many jurisdictions in the USA, Canada, and across the world have adopted social distancing and recommended the use of face masks. Considering these measures, it is prudent to understand the contributions of subpopulations-such as "silent spreaders"-to disease transmission dynamics in order to inform public health strategies in a jurisdiction-dependent manner.

A vaccination model for COVID-19 in Gauteng, South Africa.

The COVID-19 pandemic provides an opportunity to explore the impact of government mandates on movement restrictions and non-pharmaceutical interventions on a novel infection, and we investigate these strategies in early-stage outbreak dynamics. The rate of disease spread in South Africa varied over time as individuals changed behavior in response to the ongoing pandemic and to changing government policies. Using a system of ordinary differential equations, we model the outbreak in the province of Gauteng, assuming that several parameters vary over time.

Data-driven models for replication kinetics of Orthohantavirus infections.

The Hantaviridae constitute a family of viruses harbored by mice, rats, shrews, voles, moles and bats. Intriguingly, only viruses harbored by mice and rats may cause disease in humans with up to 40% case fatality rate in the Americas. Transmission of virus from rodents to humans occurs via the respiratory route and results in replication of the virus in the microvascular endothelial cells of the lung or kidney.

Effects of environmental variability on superspreading transmission events in stochastic epidemic models.

Superspreaders (individuals with a high propensity for disease spread) have played a pivotal role in recent emerging and re-emerging diseases. In disease outbreak studies, host heterogeneity based on demographic (e.g.

Modeling the role of public health education in Ebola virus disease outbreaks in Sudan.

Public involvement in Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) prevention efforts is key to reducing disease outbreaks. Targeted education through practical health information to particular groups and sub-populations is crucial to controlling the disease. In this paper, we study the dynamics of Ebola virus disease in the presence of public health education with the aim of assessing the role of behavior change induced by health education to the dynamics of an outbreak.

A county-level analysis of persons living with HIV in the southern United States.

This study uses county-level surveillance data to systematically analyze geographic variation and clustering of persons living with diagnosed HIV (PLWH) in the southern United States in 2011. Clusters corresponding to large metropolitan areas - including Miami, Atlanta, and Baltimore - had HIV prevalence rates higher (p < .001) than the regional rate.