We use a stochastic branching process to describe the beginning of a disease outbreak. Unlike compartmental models, if the basic reproduction number is greater than one there may be a minor outbreak or a major epidemic with a probability depending on the nature of the contact network. We use a network approach to determine the distribution of outbreak and epidemic sizes.
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Brauer, F. (2008). An Introduction to Networks in Epidemic Modeling. In: Brauer, F., van den Driessche, P., Wu, J. (eds) Mathematical Epidemiology. Lecture Notes in Mathematics, vol 1945. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-78911-6_4
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