Stochastic model to determinate the best quarantine strategy in cattle farms

Abstract

The quarantine is an intervention procedure to control the spread of infectious diseases among farms. However, the dilemma persists of which and how many farms need to be quarantined to achieve effective control, or at least, to make the losses minimum. In the present paper we propose an SEIR modified stochastic model to decide with high objectivity and rapidity the best quarantine strategy. Three quarantine strategies with different percentage of quarantine farms are compared by means of Monte Carlo simulation. We find that the minimum final size of an epidemic is obtained if a small fraction of farms with a high number of edges is quarantined. In addition, the proposed model was applied to a set of real data for avian influenza reported in the northwest of Tehuacán Valley, Puebla, México in 1995.