Global behavior of a multi-group SIS epidemic model with age structure (Q2575610)

The authors consider the following system of integro-partial differential equations with non-local boundary conditions, describings the dynamics of the transmission of an SIS age-structured epidemic model for a disease that is vertically as well as horizontally transmitted: \[ \begin{aligned} \left ( \frac {\partial}{\partial t}+ \frac {\partial}{\partial a}\right)s_i(t,a)&= - \mu_i (a)s_i(t,a)-\Lambda_i (a, u(t,.))s_i (t,a) + \gamma_i (a) u_i (t,a),\;a>0, t>0,\\ \left ( \frac {\partial}{\partial t}+ \frac {\partial}{\partial a}\right)u_i(t,a)&= - \mu_i (a)u_i(t,a)+\Lambda_i (a, u(t,.))s_i (t,a) - \gamma_i (a) u_i (t,a),\;a>0, t>0,\\ s_i (t,0)&= \int^\omega_0 b_i (a)\left[ s_i (t,a)+(1-q)u_i (t,a)\right]da, \quad t>0,\\ u_i (t,0)&=q_i\int^\omega_0 b_i (a)u_i (t,a)da,\quad 0<q<1,\;t>0, \\ s_i (0,a)&= \psi_i (a),\quad u_i (0,a) = \varphi_i (a),\quad i=1,2,\dots,n, \;a\geq 0, \end{aligned} \] where \(s_i (t,a), u_i (t,a)\) are, respectively, the age-density for susceptible and infective individuals at time t. \(\Lambda_i (t,u(t,.)):= K_i (a) u_i (t,a) + \sum_{j=1}^n \int^\omega_0 K_{ij}(a,s)u_j (t,s)\,ds \) is the force of infection, \(\gamma_i (a)\) is the cure rate, \(b_i (a)\) is the birth rate, \(\mu_i (a)\) is the death rate, \(q_i \in (0,1)\) is the vertical transmission parameter, and \(\psi_i (a), \varphi_i (a)\) are the initial age-distributions. The main purpose of the paper is to improve the existing stability results for the SIS age-structured epidemic model and generalize the single group results to multiple groups. The authors use semigroup theory and for, appropriate initial age-distributions, obtain convergence results for either the disease-free equilibrium or the endemic equilibrium, in terms of the dominant eigenvalue of an operator.