Fig. 5
Effect of epidemic timing. (a): Simulated weekly incidence profiles for influenza in Belgium. The realistic model is compared to the scenarios considering the anticipation or delay of the epidemic (− 4w model, − 2w model, + 2w model, + 4w model). Median curves are shown along with 95% CI (light shade). (b)-(c)-(d): Peak time difference, relative variation of epidemic size and relative variation of peak incidence, respectively, across the considered experimental scenarios. Boxplots refer to the distributions across patches. The peak time difference ΔTp discounts the time shift of the initial conditions of the considered model