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

加拿大赛诺菲巴斯德是赛诺菲的疫苗部门，是世界领先的医疗保健公司之一，也是该国最大的疫苗公司，对公共卫生有着坚定的承诺。他们为加拿大人提供重要的疫苗，用于预防和治疗传染病，常见疾病和癌症。加拿大赛诺菲巴斯德对第一世界国家日托中心的数学模型感兴趣（如加拿大），以便将其用作感染预防行为和预防性治疗的情景测试。他们特别感兴趣的是人口中的个体是儿童的模型，工作人员和父母，以及他们的互动明确建模：人与人和人与环境，在典型的爆发事件大约4-5个月的持续时间。他们希望进一步利用该模型的输出结果进行降低日托中心传染性所产生的社会经济影响分析。为了响应该公司的兴趣，我们提出开发一个基于小人口代理的日托设施模型，以测试和告知针对病毒感染（肠道，流感等）的预防政策。that can be implemented实现in a child儿童care护理setting设置.这项研究不仅在今天的护理环境中有用，它代表了一种新的方法，在小的，半封闭的人群中进行感染传播的基本数学建模。这类数学模型与类似的房室模型、博弈论模型或基于代理人的流行病学模型有很大不同，因为它指的是一个非常小的人群，与平均接触模式不同，并且有可能一次在几分钟、几小时或几天的时间尺度分辨率上进化。

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 importantvaccines 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 (suchas 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, andwhere their interactions are modeled explicitly: person-to-person and person-to-environment, during typicaloutbreak episodes roughly of 4-5 months duration. They want to further use the model's output forsocio-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 ofa 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 today care environments; it represents a novel approach in basic mathematical modelling of infectiontransmission in small, semi-closed populations. This type of mathematical model differs greatly from similarcompartmental, game theoretic or agent-based epidemiological models, since it refers to a very small population, with different thanaverage contact patterns, and with the possibility of being evolved on a time scale resolution of minutes, versushours or days at a time.