title: Polynomial epidemics and clustering in contact networks.
abstract: It is widely known that the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus was slower than exponential in several populations, even at the very beginning of the epidemic. We show that this implies a significant reduction in the effective reproductive rate of the epidemic, and describe a general mechanism, related to the clustering properties of the disease transmission network, that is capable of explaining this reduction. Our considerations provide what is, to our knowledge, a new angle on polynomial epidemic processes, and may have implications for the choice of strategy against such epidemics.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, Utrecht University, NL-3508 TA, Utrecht, The Netherlands. szendroi@math.uu.nl
authors.forename: Balázs
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Szendroi
authors.forename: Gábor
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Csányi
mesh_terms: D016000:Cluster Analysis; D016358:Contact Tracing; D004196:Disease Outbreaks; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000635:transmission*; D006801:Humans; D015233:Models, Statistical; D014779:Virus Replication