Limiting the spread of disease through altered migration patterns

Abstract: We consider a model for an epidemic in a population that occupies geographically distinct locations. The disease is spread within subpopulations by contacts between infective and susceptible individuals, and is spread between subpopulations by the migration of infected individuals. We show how susceptible individuals can act collectively to limit the spread of disease during the initial phase of an epidemic, by specifying the distribution that minimises the growth rate of the epidemic when the infectives are migrating so as to maximise the growth rate. We also give an explicit strategy that minimises the basic reproduction number, which is also shown be optimal in terms of the probability of extinction and total size of the epidemic.