We explore the non-equilibrium evolution and stationary states of an open many-body system which displays epidemic spreading dynamics in a classical and a quantum regime. Our study is motivated by recent experiments conducted in strongly interacting gases of highly excited Rydberg atoms where the facilitated excitation of Rydberg states competes with radiative decay. These systems approximately implement open quantum versions of models for population dynamics or disease spreading where species can be in a healthy, infected or immune state. We show that in a two-dimensional lattice, depending on the dominance of either classical or quantum effects, the system may display a different kind of non-equilibrium phase transition. We moreover discuss the observability of our findings in laser driven Rydberg gases with particular focus on the role of long-range interactions.Introduction -Cold atoms and ions are versatile platforms for the exploration of non-equilibrium physics. Recent examples include studies on creation and dynamics of quasi-particles [1, 2], spreading of entanglement and correlations [3][4][5], as well as many-body localization in disordered systems [6][7][8]. In particular, so-called Rydberg gases with their strong long-range interactions [9,10] permit the exploration of open and closed manybody physics [11][12][13][14][15], with recent experiments probing non-equilibrium dynamics [15][16][17][18], phase transitions [19][20][21][22] and disorder-induced localization phenomena [23].