One of the central issues in studying the complex population patterns observed in nature is the role of stochasticity. In this paper, the effects of additive spatiotemporal random variations-noise-are introduced to an epidemic model. The no-noise model exhibits a phase transition from a disease-free state to an endemic state. However, this phase transition can revert in a resonance-like manner depending on noise intensity when introducing nonzero random variations to the model. On the other hand, given a regime where disease can persist, noise can induce disappearance of the phase transition. The results obtained show that noise plays a tremendous role in the spread of the disease state, which has implications for how we try to prevent, and eventually eradicate, disease.
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