A new perspective of epidemic controlling: immunization therapy strategy in weighted complex network

Abstract

The immunization strategy towards the epidemic spreading problem has attracted widespread attention of scientists from many different fields. However, the traditional immune behavior is achieved by deleting the edges in the network, which can lead to variations in the network structure and furthermore, seriously damage the efficien- cy \u00a0of \u00a0the \u00a0network. \u00a0In \u00a0this \u00a0paper, \u00a0we \u00a0studied \u00a0a \u00a0new \u00a0type \u00a0of \u00a0immune \u00a0strategy \u00a0applied \u00a0to \u00a0weighted \u00a0networks\u2013 immunization \u00a0therapy \u00a0strategy, \u00a0which \u00a0is \u00a0to \u00a0maintain \u00a0the \u00a0necessary \u00a0network \u00a0efficiency \u00a0by \u00a0lowering \u00a0the \u00a0weight \u00a0of edges to suppress the \u00a0spread of epidemic. It is similar to the \u00a0inflammation around the infected parts of our body, which can either prevent epidemic from further spreading or do no harm to the function of the body. Thus, we name this novel strategy as \"immunization therapy strategy\". We first let the rate of transmission be proportional to the edge weight according to the \ud835\udc46 \u2212 \ud835\udc3c epidemic spreading model. In addition, we give specific dynamic evolution for infected nodes that boosts efficient epidemic control. Theoretical analysis and simulation outputs indicate that the immunization therapy strategy can efficaciously prevent the spread of the epidemic, while maintaining the high effi- ciency of the network.