Probability of disease extinction and outbreak in a stochastic tuberculosis model with fast-slow progression and relapse

Abstract

A stochastic continuous-time Markov chain tuberculosis model with fast-slow progression and relapse is established to explore the impact of the demographic variation on TB transmission. At first, the extinction threshold and probability of the disease extinction and outbreak are obtained by applying the multitype Galton-Waston branching process for the stochastic model. In numerical simulations, the probability of the disease extinction and outbreak and expected epidemic duration of the disease are estimated. To see how demographic stochasticity affects TB dynamics, we compare dynamical behaviors of both stochastic and deterministic models, and these results show that the disease extinction in stochastic model would occur while the disease is persistent for the deterministic model. Our results suggest that minimizing the contact between the infectious and the susceptible, and detecting the latently infected as early as possible, etc., could effectively prevent the spread of tuberculosis.

Keywords

• tuberculosis
• continuous-time markov chain
• multitype branching process
• probability of disease extinction
• expected epidemic duration