Impact of population size and movement on the persistence of a two-strain infectious disease (Q2105794)

This paper investigates the asymptotic profiles of endemic equilibria (EE) solutions for a two-strain \(SI_1I_2\) reaction-diffusion disease propagation model with mass action incidence of the infection and zero flux boundary conditions. The author establishes sufficient conditions to guarantee both the existence and the non-existence of the EE solutions, with a view towards establishing whether or not restricting population movement would function as a control strategy for curtailing disease spread. The total population size is seen to impact the existence of the EE solutions, in the sense that if the total population size stays under a certain threshold value then the existence of the EE solutions is ensured for small diffusion rates of susceptibles regardless of the diffusion rates of infectives provided that the basic reproductive numbers of both strains are large enough. On the contrary, if the total population size is kept small enough, then the disease can be eradicated by restricting the movement of the susceptibles. Additionally, it is proved that a competitive exclusion principle for the two strains in the model holds for large diffusion rates of the susceptible population.