BACKGROUND
During epidemics, how to allocate resources to suppress the spread of infectious disease is of great significance. Many researches focused on how to suppress the spread of infectious disease in the contact network. However, obtaining the contact network in a short period of time is difficult.
OBJECTIVE
When resources cannot meet the needs of multiple regions, it is necessary to consider how to allocate resources among multiple regions to limit the spread of the disease without details of the contact network.
METHODS
It proposed a resources allocation model to measure the cost of different allocation methods by the number of new infected individuals over a period of time. By calculating the probability of a susceptible individual being infected, it estimated the number of new infected individuals. In order to calculate the probability of a susceptible individual being infected by an infected individual in another region, conditional mutual information was introduced to estimate the strength of association relationship between regions.
RESULTS
Based on the proposed model, it compared the model costs of four different resources allocation methods and found three factors that affect the performance of each method, including the percentage of infected individuals, the resource coverage percentage, and the distribution of infected individuals in each region.
CONCLUSIONS
No method is better than other methods under any situations. When resources are allocated, the method with the least cost in a short period of time should be adopted according to the current infections, so as to control the epidemic as soon as possible.