Abstract
This paper is concerned with the approximation of a class of open population epidemic models by time-inhomogeneous birth-and-death processes. In particular, we consider models in which the population of susceptibles behaves in the absence of infection as a general branching process. It is shown that for a large initial number of susceptibles, the process of infectives behaves approximately as a time-inhomogeneous birth-and-death process. Strong convergence results are obtained over an increasing sequence of time intervals [0,tN], where N is the initial number of susceptibles and tN→∞ as N→∞.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 233-245 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Stochastic Processes and their Applications |
Volume | 73 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1998 |