On the time to extinction in recurrent epidemics

Abstract

An approximation is derived for the expected time to extinction in a stochastic model for recurrent epidemics. Numerical illustrations indicate that the approximation is crude but that it has the correct order of magnitude. The quasi-stationary distribution plays an important role in the derivation. Approximations for the critical community size and for the persistence threshold are derived. Comments are made on the classical study by Bartlett (1956-1960).