Epidemic local final size in a metapopulation network as indicator of geographical priority for control strategies in SIR type diseases

The main limitation on designing epidemic control strategies lies in their economic and social costs. Thus, a practical and efficient approach takes into consideration these factors. Most epidemics evolve in a structured population, being the geographical structure the most evident. In this situation, having a criteria for identifying the most effective locations where control measures can optimize available resources is desirable. In this paper, a regional index based on the final epidemic size predicted by a metapopulation model is proposed. An efficient algorithm to calculate explicit index values was developed, and different control strategies that used the recommended index were compared with others that do not take the index information into account. We found that the proposed index represents an easy and fast criterion to guide simple control strategies. This type of index offers a new powerful approach where the information encoded in a deterministic mathematical model can be summarized to guide realistic and practical control strategies for disease spreading and epidemics.