Group 5: Ebola
A growing number of Ebola cases have been reported in a small town. The following table shows the number of reported cases each day for the last 11 days.
Day 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Cases 1 2 2 3 3 6 4 6 13 13 20
You have been given additional information that will help you to model the disease • The population of the town is 100,000 • An infected person will infect others at a rate of 3 per day • The latent period of the disease is 10 days • The average infectious duration is assumed to be 2 days, since after 2 days most infected people will be too ill to have contact with others • Some individuals will die from infection while others will recover and become immune. In either case we can assume they are “removed” from the system
The mayor of the town is considering two possible ways to keep the disease under control a) Impose social restrictions on the whole town. This will reduce the transmission rate from 3 to 2 b) Force anyone suspected of having latent Ebola into quarantine. Each day, 20% of infected people who are in the latent period of their infection are discovered and moved into quarantine. The quarantine period is 14 days.
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