Global stability of SIR epidemic models with a wide class of nonlinear incidence rates and distributed delays (Q628781)

The authors investigate the following SIR model: \[ \begin{aligned} S'(t) &= \mu - \int^h_0p(\tau)f(S(t), I(t-\tau))d\tau -\mu S(t),\\ I'(t) &= \int^h_0p(\tau)f(S(t), I(t-\tau))d\tau -(\mu +\sigma)I(t),\\ R'(t) &= \sigma I(t) -\mu R(t). \end{aligned} \] Under some monotonicity conditions on \(f\) and \(f/I\), they prove that the disease-free equilibrium \(E_0=(S_0, 0, 0)\) is the only equilibrium and that it is globally asymptotically stable if and only if \(R_0\leq 1\), and that the positive equilibrium \(E_*\) is globally asymptotically stable if and only if \(R_0>1\). This is achieved by first proving the permanence and then constructing a suitable Lyapunov functional. The result is significant and interesting due to the feature that the global asymptotic behaviour is independent of the distributed delays; it only depends on the basic reproduction number \(R_0\).