2020 ESA Annual Meeting (August 3 - 6)
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COS 222 Abstract - Comparative dynamics of five common human viruses contributing to seasonal influenza-like illness

Julie Spencer, Information Systems and Modeling (A-1), Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM; Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, Helen J. Wearing, Department of Biology and Department of Mathematics & Statistics, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM and Carrie Manore, Information Systems and Modeling, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM
Background/Question/Methods

Influenza-like illness (ILI) accounts for a large burden of annual morbidity and mortality worldwide. In the United States alone, between 9 and 49 million illnesses each year are attributed to ILI. Influenza-like illness is defined by the CDC as a cluster of symptoms: a fever of 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and a cough and/or a sore throat without a known cause other than influenza. To address the need for a finer-grained understanding of the ecological basis for this syndromic illness, we asked how epidemics of five common viruses contributing to ILI would potentially interact, and how they would differ during one flu season. We developed a deterministic SEIR model to compare the dynamics of influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), rhinovirus, human coronavirus, and adenovirus. We derived a symbolic expression for R0, conducted a literature review to establish plausible ranges for model parameters, and fit the model to case count data from the CDC for the 2018-19 season for each virus. Assuming a null model of a fully susceptible population of 50,000 individuals, no background immunity, and independent behavior of the viruses, we simulated five epidemic curves for one season.

Results/Conclusions

We find that our expression for R0 for the system of ordinary differential equations depends on the basic transmission rate, the reduction of transmission in hospital, the proportion of symptomatic individuals hospitalized, and the rates of progress through the three infectious classes. Our simulations of epidemics for the five viruses show that RSV exhibits the earliest peak, between 65 and 85 days, while seasonal coronavirus exhibits the latest peak, between 115 and 145 days. Influenza generates the least total cumulative infected number of individuals, and seasonal coronavirus has the highest total cumulative infected number of individuals--4% to 6% more than that of influenza. These results have implications for prioritization of resource allocation and motivation for continued development of rapid diagnostics.

LA-UR-20-21628

UNCLASSIFIED

See more of: Disease And Epidemiology 9
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