Traveling waves in a Kermack-Mckendrick epidemic model with diffusion and latent period (Q744151)

This paper presents a diffusive Kermack-Mckendrick epidemic model to describe the dynamics of diseases with a saturating incidence rate and a latent period in the infected class. The author first studies the existence, uniqueness and positivity of the solution to the initial-value problem associated to the system under consideration. Then the author uses the Schauder fixed point theorem and the Laplace transform to show the existence and non-existence of traveling wave solutions for this system. The author finds that the existence and non-existence of traveling wave solutions is completely determined by \(R_{0}\). If the threshold value \(R_{0}>1\), then there exists \(c^{*}>0\) such that, for every \(c>c^{*}\), the model has a traveling wave solution, and if \(R_{0}<1\) and \(c\geq 0\); or \(R_{0}>1\) and \(c\in (0,c^{*})\), then the model has no traveling wave solutions. The constant \(c^{*}\) is the minimum speed for the existence of traveling wave solutions of the model.