Statistical analysis of an endemic disease from a capture–recapture experiment

There are a number of statistical techniques for analysing epidemic outbreaks. However, many diseases are endemic within populations and the analysis of such diseases is complicated by changing population demography. Motivated by the spread of cowpox amongst rodent populations, a combined mathematical model for population and disease dynamics is introduced. A Markov chain Monte Carlo algorithm is then constructed to make statistical inference for the model based on data being obtained from a capture– recapture experiment. The statistical analysis is used to identify the key elements in the spread of the cowpox virus.