Figure 4.

Country variation in the 5 month time period (March22nd-August 22nd) of the epidemic is consistent with either different community structures or different levels of background control. (A) Cumulative number of Ebola cases (gray curves) for the community size C and temporal shift for the first day of the outbreak that provides the best fit of the reported WHO data (filled black circles) from March 22, 2014 to August 22, 2014 while all other parameters were held constant. For Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, optimal fits were found for community sizes C = {27,131,251}, respectively while the temporal shift predicted that the epidemic in each country began (i.e., simulation “Day 1”) on Dec 29^th, 2013 for Guinea; April 15^th, 2014 for Sierra Leone and March 5^th, 2014 for Liberia. The (B) Cumulative number of Ebola cases (gray curves) for the level of epidemic control and temporal shift for the first day of the outbreak that provides the best fit of the reported WHO data (filled black circles) from March 22, 2014 to August 22, 2014 while all other parameters were held constant (C = 251). For Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, optimal fits within the nearest 5% reduction were found for epidemic control levels ${\displaystyle {\beta }_0=\left\{0.3,0.1,0.0\right\}}$, respectively while the temporal shift predicted that the epidemic in each country began (i.e., simulation “Day 1”) on Dec 30^th, 2013 for Guinea; April 11^th, 2014 for Sierra Leone and March 5^th, 2014 for Liberia. Simulation results of cumulative Ebola cases results are shown as mean ± standard error of 100 simulations seeded with one infectious individual on the 1^st day.