On the eradicability of infections with partially protective vaccination in models with backward bifurcation (Q2390604)

The authors presented an SIS model with vaccination given to a proportion p of the newborns immediately after birth, where they divide the susceptible population into two types according to their level of immunity. They looked at the equilibria of the model, where the model shows the existence of multiple stationary states, and determined the regions of attraction of them. Then both local and global stability problems have been studied. Since the model shows backward bifurcations, the basic reproduction number is no longer meaningful. Therefore, the minimum elimination effort has been evaluated and the controllability of the infection depends mainly on the possibility to reduce this minimum elimination effort to below one. This point has been discussed in detail in section 8 of the paper. A very important result is that a strategy for eliminating the infection, represented by this model, based on vaccination solely does not succed if the successful contact rate is above a certain level. Therefore, there must be a composite strategy based on reducing the contact rate below this level (by isolation or any other way) and then vaccination could be applied.