https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-024-05020-6
Regular Article
Modeling the sexual transmission dynamics of mpox in the United States of America
1
Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
2
Department of Mathematical Sciences, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria
3
International Centre for Applied Mathematical Modelling and Data Analytics (ICAMMDA) in partnership with the West Africa Mathematical Modeling Capacity Development (WAMCAD), Federal University Oye-Ekiti, Oye-Ekiti, Nigeria
4
Department of Mathematical Sciences, Stellenbosch University, Stellenbosch, South Africa
5
Department of Mathematics, University of Abuja, Abuja, FCT, Nigeria
6
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa
7
Ecological Integration Lab, Graduate School of Life Sciences, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
8
Department of Mathematical Sciences, Adekunle Ajasin University, Akungba-Akoko, Nigeria
Received:
3
January
2024
Accepted:
17
February
2024
Published online:
14
March
2024
In May 2022, an outbreak of mpox, a viral disease that was then popularly known as monkeypox, was first confirmed in the United Kingdom with a cluster of cases. Within a short period of time, the disease spread to the United States, where the index case was recorded on May 17, 2022, in Massachusetts. This outbreak’s clinical and epidemiological characteristics are distinct from those of the earlier ones. It has been widely reported that sexual transmission is the primary means of spreading the current outbreak, with the community of men who have sex with men (MSM) being disproportionately and significantly impacted. To this end, we devised a two-group-compartmental model incorporating four distinct sexual transmission routes with focus on the United States. The Bayesian statistical framework with uniform priors was used to fit and capture the spread of the disease in both the men and women communities. Since the data were not disaggregated into men and women populations, some data analyses techniques were used to achieve the disaggregation. Sensitivity and scenario analyses revealed the respective contribution of each sexual transmission route to the basic reproduction number. The results reveal that the major contributing factor to the spread of the disease is the MSM transmission route, and condom usage with a high level of compliance can completely eradicate the spread of mpox in the United States. Since condom usage has shown a promising control measure for the spread of mpox in the MSM community, it is highly recommended that men should be more compliant with the use of condom or abstain completely from having sex with fellow men.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2024. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
