Modeling the transmission dynamics of varicella in Hungary

Abstract

Vaccines against varicella-zoster virus (VZV) are under introduction in Hungary into the routine vaccination schedule, hence it is important to understand the current transmission dynamics and to estimate the key parameters of the disease. Mathematical models can be greatly useful in advising public health policy decision making by comparing predictions for different scenarios. First we consider a simple compartmental model that includes key features of VZV such as latency and reactivation of the virus as zoster, and exogeneous boosting of immunity. After deriving the basic reproduction number R, the model is analysed mathematically and the threshold dynamics is proven: if R≤ 1 then the virus will be eradicated, while if R> 1 then an endemic equilibrium exists and the virus uniformly persists in the population. Then we extend the model to include seasonality, and fit it to monthly incidence data from Hungary. It is shown that besides the seasonality, the disease dynamics has intrinsic multi-annual periodicity. We also investigate the sensitivity of the model outputs to the system parameters and the underreporting ratio, and provide estimates for R.