Modelling the spread of infections in a first-world child care facility: coding, analysis and policy implications

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Sanofi Pasteur in Canada, the vaccines division of Sanofi, is one of the world's leading healthcare companies, and the country's largest vaccine company with a strong commitment to public health. They provide important vaccines to Canadians for the prevention and treatment of infectious diseases, common illnesses and cancers. Canada Sanofi Pasteur is interested in a mathematical model of a day care center in a 1st world country (such as Canada), in order to use it as scenario testing for infection prevention behaviour and prophylactic treatments. They are specifically interested in a model where individuals in the population are kids, staff and parents, and where their interactions are modeled explicitly: person-to-person and person-to-environment, during typical outbreak episodes roughly of 4-5 months duration. They want to further use the model's output for socio-economic impact analyses arising from lowering infectiousness in day care centers. In response to the company's interest, we propose the development of a small-population agent-based model of a day care facility for the purpose of testing and informing prevention policies against viral infections (enteric, influenza, etc.) that can be implemented in a child care setting. The research is not only useful in applications to day care environments; it represents a novel approach in basic mathematical modelling of infection transmission in small, semi-closed populations. This type of mathematical model differs greatly from similar compartmental, game theoretic or agent-based epidemiological models, since it refers to a very small population, with different than average contact patterns, and with the possibility of being evolved on a time scale resolution of minutes, versus hours or days at a time.