Strength and weakness of disease-induced herd immunity in networks.

ABSTRACT: When a fraction of a population becomes immune to an infectious disease, the population-wide infection risk decreases nonlinearly due to collective protection, known as herd immunity. Some studies based on mean-field models suggest that natural infection in a heterogeneous population may induce herd immunity more efficiently than homogeneous immunization. However, we theoretically show that this is not necessarily the case when the population is modeled as a network instead of using the mean-field approach. We identify two competing mechanisms driving disease-induced herd immunity in networks: the biased distribution of immunity toward socially active individuals enhances herd immunity, while the topological localization of immune individuals weakens it. The effect of localization is stron

SUBMITTER: Hiraoka T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12280881 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature