Monte Carlo Simulations of Infection Spread in Indoor Environment

Abstract

The dynamics of infection spread in populations has received popular attention since the outbreak of Covid-19 and many statistical models have been developed. One of the interesting areas of research is short-time dynamics in confined, indoor environments. We have modeled this using a simple Monte Carlo scheme. Our model is generally applicable for the peer-to-peer transmission case, when the infection spread occurs only between an infected subject and a healthy subject with a certain probability, i.e., airborne and surface transmission is neglected. The probability of infection spread is incorporated using a simple exponential decay with distance between the subjects. Simulations are performed for the cases of (1) constant subject population and (2) variable subject population due to inflow/outflow. We specifically focus on the large fluctuations in the dynamics due to finite number of subjects. Results of our study may be useful to determine social-distancing guidelines in indoor contexts.