Contagious Disease Dynamics for Biological Warfare and Bioterrorism Casualty Assessments

摘要

This investigation focuses on the spread of a contagious disease subsequent to the military employment of a biological weapon or an act of bioterrorism. Of particular interest are expected or average time histories of four cohorts: (I) Susceptible individuals; (2) Exposed and infected (incubating) individuals; (3) Infectious (contagious) individuals and (4) Removed (noncontagious, alive, or dead) individuals. The objective SEIR curves characterize health care and mortuary service needs as functions of time for a known disease, for given initial conditions, and for an average time-varying rate of disease transmission. Such a disease transmission rate is a key predictive tool, and it is obtainable from a Monte Carlo analysis of historical outbreak data. Recently published epidemiological data for the 1995 Ebola hemorrhagic fever outbreak in Kikwit, Democratic Republic of the Congo, serves as an excellent vehicle to demonstrate the overall semi-empirical SEIR model.