Seasonality and dynamics of whooping cough

Whooping cough (pertussis) dynamics provide an interesting disease ecology case study.Unlike other childhood diseases, the observed patterns of pertussis dynamics are found verydiverse and are not easily captured by simple deterministic models. This has led to the currentunderstanding that the disease dynamics can only be explained by adding stochasticity intothe models. In this work, we demonstrate that an appropriate deterministic model can explainpertussis dynamics. The consequences of using the model in making public health decisionsare also discussed. Whooping cough dynamics also exhibits strong seasonality, which is thought to result fromvariation in contact rates. In this research, seasonal change in disease incidence and thetiming of outbreaks are also analyzed using case report data from several UK cities. Weshow that birth rates in prior years have a positive correlation with current outbreak sizesand a negative correlation with current outbreak peak time. A modeling approach is alsoused to understand and explain the patterns found in the data.