Epidemic spreading on a scale-free network with awareness

This paper presents a modified susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) model with the effects of awareness and vaccination to study the epidemic spreading on scale-free networks based on the mean-field theory. In this model, when susceptible individuals receive awareness from their infected neighbor nodes, they will take vaccination measures. The theoretical analysis and the numerical simulations show that the existence of awareness and vaccination can significantly improve the epidemic threshold and reduce the risk of virus outbreaks. In addition, regardless of the existence of vaccination, the awareness can increase the spreading threshold and slow the spreading speed effectively. For a given awareness and a certain spreading rate, the total number of infections reduces with the increasing vaccination rate.