The total expected cost depends on the parameter values and the initial epidemiological state s 0 ,i 0 ð Þ. Thus, conditional on a set of parameter values, Monte Carlo simulation can be used to search over values of a and c in order to find the combination that minimizes E C 0 f g: For each combination of a and c, with a ranging from 0 to 0.7 and c from 0 to 750 in increments of 50, we conduct 100 simulations of the epidemic, using the true parameter values, in order to estimate the mean cost associated with the intervention (a,c). The strategy producing the lowest mean cost is defined to be the optimal intervention.