Stochastic epidemic models with random environment: quasi-stationarity, extinction and final size (Q376327)

Infectious disease transmission is influenced both by direct contacts and environmental factors. In most cases it is assumed the environmental changes are reflected only in the contact transmission rates, but their effect appears also in other transition rates. This paper studies the SIS and SIR epidemic models when the random environment influences the spread of the infection disease, and this influence is described by means of a continuous-time Markov chain. There is given a definition of transmission factor as an extention of quantity for epidemic models with constant transmission rate; the quasi-stationary distribution, the extinction time and the size of epidemic are analyzed. The main attention is concentrated on the algorithmic analysis of stochastic epidemic models.