A spatial SEIRS reaction-diffusion model in heterogeneous environment (Q2284620)

This research is very topical in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. It studies the following SEIRS reaction-diffusion model in the heterogeneous environment model \[ \begin{cases} \partial_t S=d_S\,\Delta S-\beta(x) S I N^{-1}+\alpha R,\quad x\in\Omega,\,\,t>0,\\ \partial_t E=d_E\,\Delta E+\beta(x) S I N^{-1}-\sigma E,\quad x\in\Omega,\,\,t>0,\\ \partial_t I=d_I\,\Delta I+\sigma E-\gamma(x) I,\quad x\in\Omega,\,\,t>0,\\ \partial_t R=d_R\,\Delta R+\gamma(x) I -\alpha R,\quad x\in\Omega,\,\,t>0,\\ \partial S/\partial n=\partial E/\partial n=\partial I/\partial n=\partial R/\partial n=0, \quad x\in \partial\Omega,\,\,t>0, \end{cases}\tag{1} \] where \(S(x,t), E(x,t), I(x,t)\) and \(R(x,t)\) denote the density of susceptible, exposed, infected and recovered individuals at location \(x\) and time \(t\), \(N(x,t)=S(x,t)+E(x,t)+I(x,t)+R(x,t)=N_0=\text{const}\), \(d_S, d_E, d_I, d_R\) represent the diffusion coefficients for the susceptible, exposed, infected and recovered populations, respectively, \(\beta(x)\) and \(\gamma(x)\) are the disease transmition rate and recovery rate, respectively. The main goal of this research is to caracterize the basic reproduction number of system (1), denoted by \(R_0=\mu_0^{-1}\), where \(\mu_0\) is the unique positive eigenvalue for the following linear problem \[ \begin{cases} -d_E\,\Delta \varphi_E+\sigma \varphi_E=\mu \beta(x) \varphi_I,\quad x\in\Omega,\\ -d_I\,\Delta \varphi_I+\gamma(x) \varphi_I-\sigma \varphi_E=0,\quad x\in\Omega,\\ \partial \varphi_E/\partial n=\partial \varphi_I/\partial n=0, \quad x\in \partial\Omega. \end{cases}\tag{2} \] So, the authors prove: \par (i) If \(R_0\le 1\), then \(E(x,t), I(x,t), R(x,t) \to 0\) uniformly in \(\overline{\Omega}\) as \( t\to \infty\) and \[ \int_{\Omega}\,S(x,t) dx \to N_0\quad\text{as }t\to \infty.\] \par (ii) If \(R_0>1\), then there exists \(\varepsilon_0>0\) such that any positive solution of (1) satisfies \[ \displaystyle \lim\inf_{t\to \infty}||(S(t,\cdot),E(t,\cdot),I(t,\cdot),R(t,\cdot))-\big(N_0 |\Omega|^{-1},0,0,0)||_{L^{\infty}(\Omega)}>\varepsilon_0. \] (iii) If either \(\beta\) or \(\gamma\) is a constant function, then \(R_0\) is a monotonically decreasing function of \(d_E\) and \(d_I\) and strict monotonicity holds if and only if one of them is non constant. (iv) In the one-dimensional case it is proved that if one of \(\beta\) or \(\gamma\) is monotonically decreasing and the other is monotonically increasing, then \(R_0\) is a monotonically decreasing function of \(d_E\) and \(d_I\). Also the authors study the asymptotic profile of the endemic equilibrium.