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Approximating the Reed-Frost epidemic process. (English) Zbl 1113.92054

Summary: The paper is concerned with refining two well-known approximations to the Reed-Frost epidemic process. The first is the branching process approximation in the early stages of the epidemic; we extend its range of validity, and sharpen the estimates of the error incurred. The second is the normal approximation to the distribution of the final size of a large epidemic, which we complement with a detailed local limit approximation. The latter, in particular, is relevant if the approximations are to be used for statistical inference.

MSC:

92D30 Epidemiology
60J85 Applications of branching processes
60F05 Central limit and other weak theorems
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References:

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