Latent Period

Exposed

So generally when you catch a virus it needs some time to grow inside you before it can be given to someone else. This time is called the latent period.

To represent this in a mathematical model we put a new compartment in between the susceptibles and infectious which we'll called the exposed.

Like the transition from infectious to removed, we can represent the number moving from exposed to infectious by

Number of new infectious between the two times
=
Number of exposed people
÷
Average latent period
×
Time difference between the two times