Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Infectious Diseases: Epidemiology and Prevention
Volume 12 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1454450

Prevention and Control of Infectious Disease Transmission in Subways: An Improved susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered Model

Provisionally accepted
Qiaoyun Ma Qiaoyun Ma Fang Hou Fang Hou Jiangtao Wang Jiangtao Wang Fang Zhou Fang Zhou *
  • Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    A well-connected transportation network unites localities but also accelerates the transmission of infectious diseases. Subways-an important aspect of daily travel in big cities-are high-risk sites for the transmission of urban epidemics. Intensive research examining the transmission mechanisms of infectious diseases in subways is necessary to ascertain the risk of disease transmission encountered by commuters. In this paper, we improve the Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered (SEIR) model and propose the Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Asymptomatic infected (SEIA) model. First, we added asymptomatic patients to the improved model as a parameter to explore the role of asymptomatic patients in the transmission of infectious diseases in a subway. The numbers of boarding and alighting passengers were added to the model as two time-varying parameters to simulate the exchange of passengers at each station.The improved model could simulate the transmission of infectious diseases in subways and identify the key factors of transmission. We then produced an example of the transmission of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in a subwayusing real subway passenger datasubstituted into the model for the calculations. We ascertained that the number of exposed people continuously increasedwith the operation of the subway. Asymptomatic patients had a greater impact on the transmission of infectious diseases than infected people in the course of transmission. The SEIA model constructed in this paper accurately determined the spread of infectious diseases in a subwayand may also be applicable to studies on the transmission of infectious diseases in other urban public transport systems.

    Keywords: SEIA, infectious disease transmission, Subway protection measures, Asymptomatic patient, infectious prevention and control

    Received: 25 Jun 2024; Accepted: 28 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Ma, Hou, Wang and Zhou. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Fang Zhou, Henan Agricultural University, Zhengzhou, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.