Fig. 4.

Fraction of occupied patches over time as compared to fraction of populations above threshold of detectability. A comparison of the average fraction of patches occupied, regardless of local population size, and the fraction of patches with local population sizes greater than the threshold of detectability, here set to 10³ cells/patch. The slow decline in metapopulation (first panel) suggests that hospital pathogens survive for much longer periods of time than previously suspected without a high probability of detection through most monitoring protocols. For instance, at 500 days, approximately 50% of all patches have at least some pathogens in them, but only about 15% have more than the number required to be detected with any reasonable probability