On the effect of lowering population's movement to control the spread of an infectious disease (Q2669914)

This paper studied the asymptotic behavior of endemic equilibrium solutions of a diffusive epidemic model in spatially heterogeneous environment. Specifically, the size of \(d_I/d_S\) plays a crucial role in the dynamics of the disease in the sense that: (i) if \(d_I/d_S\) is small, the disease may persist and the total size of the infected group will be maximized; (ii) if \(d_I/d_S\) is large, then the total size of the susceptible group is maximized while the total size of the infected group is minimized. Theoretical results suggested that lowering the movement rate of the population in an attempt to limit infection is an effective control strategy if the susceptible hosts' movement rate is kept sufficiently smaller than that of the infected individuals.