SIR Model Public Health Questions

Using the SIR model in the Excel spreadsheet on Blackboard here to answer following questions. Hint make sure you parameterize the model correctly before you start. My video posted inside Week 13 Assignment folder may help

Q1) What is the likely contact rate for this epidemic of influenza? Provide a justification for your answer and show any work. (1 point)

Q2) The City Department of Health (DOH) recommends avoiding unnecessary travel, so that the contact rate becomes 0.000032 for this scenario. Assuming that this contact rate stays the same over time, when is the peak of the influenza epidemic likely to occur? Provide details to support your answer and show all work if that applies. (1 point)

Q3) The City DOH repeat their recommendation about avoiding unnecessary travel, and the contact rate now becomes 0.000025 for this scenario. The city hospital’s Intensive Care Unit (ICU) can only handle 50 cases at the same time, and there is no alternative ICU available. The DOH wants to ensure the city hospital does not run out ICU beds, even if all ICU beds are used for influenza cases. The DOH knows that a policy of asking everyone to wear a mask will reduce the influenza transmission probability to 0.29. Would such a policy be sufficient to ensure that there are enough ICU beds at the peak of the epidemic? Explain why or why not by providing details and any calculations to support your answer. (4 points)

Q4) The city DOH repeat their recommendation about avoiding unnecessary travel, but the contact rate remains 0.000025. The city DOH is unsure if sufficient supplies of masks are available, so they also want to evaluate a different policy of giving all influenza cases Tamiflu instead of asking people to wear masks. Tamiflu reduces the duration of influenza by 1 day on average. Describe how the influenza epidemic would change if this policy was implemented successfully without the use of masks. In addition, would there be sufficient ICU beds if this policy were implemented? Provide details and any calculations to support your answer. (4 points)

Optional Extra Credit Question: Q5) The city DOH want to assess a new policy, where they assume the contact rate is 0.000032 but they will now have a new influenza vaccine. The problem is they will only have time to vaccinate 25% of the population before they are likely to catch influenza (assuming that all vaccinated people are immune immediately to the new strain). How will the peak number and the cumulative number of influenza cases change compared to the conditions in Q2? Provide a justification for your answer and show any work. (3 points)