The spread of infectious disease on complex networks with household-structure

In this paper, we study the household-structure SIS epidemic spreading on general complex networks. The household structure gives us the way to distinguish the inner and the outer infection rates. Unlike household-structure models on homogenous networks, such as regular and random networks, we consider heterogeneous networks with arbitrary degree distribution p(k). Through mean field analysis and computer simulations, we find some unique phenomena only existing in divergent network with household structure. In our model, disease can spread on the scale-free network even when local recovery rate is greater than inner infection rate in every household. This implies that no disease is spreading in every single household, but for the whole network disease is spreading. Since our society network seems like this structure, maybe this conclusion remind us that during disease spreading we should pay more attention to network structure than local cure condition.