Specifics of coinfection and it's dynamics

TL;DR

This paper develops mathematical models to analyze how co-infection dynamics are affected by phenomena like cross immunity and population density, highlighting the role of carrying capacity in disease persistence.

Contribution

It introduces new models incorporating partial cross immunity, density dependence, and recovered population effects, with analysis of stability and disease invasion thresholds.

Findings

Basic reproduction number depends on carrying capacity.

Disease persistence is influenced by population density.

Recovered population is not uniformly bounded by carrying capacity.

Abstract

It is essential to understand the dynamics of epidemics in the presence of coexisting pathogens. There are various phenomenon that can effect the dynamics. In this paper, we formulate a mathematical model using different assumptions to capture the effect of these additional phenomena such as partial cross immunity, density dependence in each class and a role of recovered population in the dynamics. We found the basic reproduction number for each model which is the threshold that describes the invasion of disease in population. The basic reproduction number in each model shows that the persistence of disease or strains depends on the carrying capacity. In the model of this paper, we present the local stability analysis of the boundary equilibrium points and observed that the recovered population is not uniformly bounded with respect to the carrying capacity.