Viable Control of an Epidemiological Model

TL;DR

This paper develops a control strategy for dengue epidemic management by maintaining infection levels below a threshold using time-dependent fumigation, with a focus on the viability kernel in the Ross-Macdonald model.

Contribution

It introduces a viability kernel approach for controlling dengue spread in the Ross-Macdonald model with time-dependent fumigation rates.

Findings

Derived explicit viability kernels for different infection caps.

Characterized viable policies for sustained infection control.

Applied the model to a real dengue outbreak in Cali, Colombia.

Abstract

In mathematical epidemiology, epidemic control often aims at driving the number of infected individuals to zero, asymptotically. However , during the transitory phase, the number of infected can peak at high values. In this paper, we consider mosquito vector control in the Ross-Macdonald epidemiological model, with the goal of capping the proportion of infected by dengue at the peak. We formulate this problem as one of control of a dynamical system under state constraint. We allow for time-dependent fumigation rates to reduce the population of mosquito vector, in order to maintain the proportion of infected individuals by dengue below a threshold for all times. The so-called viability kernel is the set of initial states (mosquitoes and infected individuals) for which such a fumigation control trajectory exists. Depending on whether the cap on the proportion of infected is low, high or medium, we provide different expressions of the viability kernel. We also characterize so-called viable policies that produce, at each time, a fumigation rate as a function of current proportions of infected humans and mosquitoes, such that the proportion of infected humans remains below a threshold for all times. We provide a numerical application in the case of control of a dengue outbreak in 2013 in Cali, Colombia.