Multi-Type Branching Processes Modeling of Nosocomial Epidemics

Abstract Nosocomial epidemics are infectious diseases which spread among different types of susceptible individuals in a health-care facility. To model this type of epidemics, we use a multi-type branching process with a multivariate negative binomial offspring distribution. In particular, we estimate the basic reproduction number R 0 {R_{0}} and study its relationship with the parameters of the offspring distribution. in case of a single-type epidemic, we investigate the effect of contact tracing on the estimates for R 0 {R_{0}} .