Switchover phenomenon for general graphs

Abstract We study SIR‐type epidemics (susceptible‐infected‐resistant) on graphs in two scenarios: (i) when the initial infections start from a well‐connected central region and (ii) when initial infections are distributed uniformly. Previously, Ódor et al. demonstrated on a few random graph models that the expectation of the total number of infections undergoes a switchover phenomenon; the central region is more dangerous for small infection rates, while for large rates, the uniform seeding is expected to infect more nodes. We rigorously prove this claim under mild, deterministic assumptions on the underlying graph. If we further assume that the central region has a large enough expansion, the second moment of the degree distribution is bounded and the number of initial infections is comparable to the number of vertices, the difference between the two scenarios is shown to be macroscopic.