A TRANSMISSION MODEL FOR A DISEASE WITH SOME FATALITIES

A stochastic epidemic model which allows some infected individuals to die from the disease is considered. The model includes the general epi demic and the fatal disease model as particular cases. A set of iterat ive equations is derived from which the probability distribution of th e final size of the epidemic can be computed. It is illustrated that t he fatal disease model is distinct in that it results in nearly all or hardly anyone being infected in a large population. An easily compute d estimator for a key parameter of the model is derived and it is illu strated that it has good efficiency relative to the maximum likelihood estimator, which is very tedious to compute.