Contact networks, competing pathogens, and the coexistence threshold

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  • 16 February 2005
Abstract
Diseases spread through host populations over the contact networks between individuals, and a number of results about this process have been derived in recent years by exploiting connections between epidemic processes and bond percolation on networks. Here we investigate the case of competing pathogens in a single population, which has been the subject of recent interest among epidemiologists. We demonstrate that two competing pathogens can both spread through the same population only for intermediate values of the bond occupation probability that lie above the classic epidemic threshold and below a second higher value, which we call the coexistence threshold, corresponding to a distinct topological phase transition in networked systems.

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