Mathematical Modeling and Analysis
Mathematical Modeling and Analysis
Foot-and-Mouth disease (FMD) is a highly infectious illness of livestock and a serious economic threat. We model the 2001 FMD epidemic in Uruguay using the complete network of counties through a system of coupled differential equations. The transmission rate decays exponential fast with the distance between county centroids. We estimate model parameters via least-squares fitting using an appropriate error structure. The spatial model fit to the data is statistically better than that obtained by a null model based on the homogeneous mixing assumption. Finally, we assess the role of an animal movement ban and a mass vaccination programme that took place in Uruguay during the epidemic.
