Modelling influenza incidence in relation to meteorological parameters in Kenya

Abstract

Meteorological parameters are believed to play a role in the influenza seasonality; influenza activities occurs sporadically all year round in the tropical regions with some peaks coinciding with rainy season and cold months. In this study, Influenza is modelled as a 5-dimensional deterministic system of ODEs with a variable transmission rate expressed as an exponential function of the meteorological parameters. We analysed the model and established local and global stability of disease free and endemic equilibrium points, the equations are solved numerically in matlab using ODE23 solver The findings show that an increase in rainfall leads to an increase in influenza infections in the following month and a decrease in temperature leads to an increase in the influenza infections. The transmission rate was approximated from the data and we found that the peaks in the reproduction number and influenza infections occurs almost simultaneously and similarly when the reproduction number decreases, influenza infections also decreases.