On the Role of Asymptomatic Carriers in Epidemic Spread Processes

Abstract: We present an epidemiological compartment model, SAIR(S), that explicitly captures the dynamics of asymptomatic infected individuals in an epidemic spread process. We first present a group model and then discuss networked versions. We provide an investigation of equilibria and stability properties for these models, and present simulation results illustrating the effects of asymptomatic-infected individuals on the spread of the disease. We also discuss local isolation effects on the epidemic dynamics in terms of the networked models. Finally, we provide initial parameter estimation results based on simple least-squares approaches and local test-site data.\par Keywords: Epidemic dynamics, networks, data-informed modeling, stability analysis, parameter estimation