Effective degree household network disease model.

An ordinary differential equation (ODE) epidemiological model for the spread of a disease that confers immunity, such as influenza, is introduced incorporating both network topology and households. Since most individuals of a susceptible population are members of a household, including the household structure as an aspect of the contact network in the population is of significant interest. Epidemic curves derived from the model are compared with those from stochastic simulations, and shown to be in excellent agreement. Expressions for disease threshold parameters of the ODE model are derived analytically and interpreted in terms of the household structure. It is shown that the inclusion of households can slow down or speed up the disease dynamics, depending on the variance of the inter-household degree distribution. This model illustrates how households (clusters) can affect disease dynamics in a complicated way.