  Containing an epidemic at its origin is the most desirable mitigation.
Epidemics have often originated in rural areas, with rural communities among
the first affected. Disease dynamics in rural regions have received limited
attention, and results of general studies cannot be directly applied since
population densities and human mobility factors are very different in rural
regions from those in cities. We create a network model of a rural community in
Kansas, USA, by collecting data on the contact patterns and computing rates of
contact among a sampled population. We model the impact of different mitigation
strategies detecting closely connected groups of people and frequently visited
locations. Within those groups and locations, we compare the effectiveness of
random and targeted vaccinations using a Susceptible-Exposed-Infected-Recovered
compartmental model on the contact network. Our simulations show that the
targeted vaccinations of only 10% of the sampled population reduced the size of
the epidemic by 34.5%. Additionally, if 10% of the population visiting one of
the most popular locations is randomly vaccinated, the epidemic size is reduced
by 19%. Our results suggest a new implementation of a highly effective strategy
for targeted vaccinations through the use of popular locations in rural
communities.
