Surprisingly, the discrete-time version of the general 1927 Kermack-McKendrick
epidemic model has, to our knowledge, not been formulated in the literature, and
we rectify this omission here. The discrete time version is as general and
flexible as its continuous-time counterpart, and contains numerous
compartmental models as special cases. In contrast to the continuous time
version, the discrete time version of the model is very easy to implement
computationally, and thus promises to become a powerful tool for exploring
control scenarios for specific infectious diseases. To demonstrate the
potential, we investigate numerically how the incidence-peak size depends on
model ingredients. We find that, with the same reproduction number and initial
speed of epidemic spread, compartmental models systematically predict lower peak
sizes than models that use a fixed duration for the latent and infectious periods.
On discrete time epidemic models in Kermack-McKendrick form
