On an impulsive faecal-oral model in a moving infected environment

TL;DR

This paper models the spread of faecal-oral diseases using an impulsive free boundary approach, analyzing how periodic disinfection and infected region expansion influence disease dynamics and control strategies.

Contribution

It introduces a novel impulsive free boundary model incorporating periodic disinfection and expansion effects, providing new insights into disease spread and control.

Findings

Disease vanishes if the principal eigenvalue at infinity is non-negative.

Disease spreads if the eigenvalue at infinity is negative and initial eigenvalue is non-positive.

Increasing impulse intensity and reducing expansion capacity aid in disease prevention.

Abstract

This paper develops an impulsive faecal-oral model with free boundary to in order to understand how the exposure to a periodic disinfection and expansion of the infected region together influences the spread of faecal-oral diseases. We first check that this impulsive model has a unique globally nonnegative classical solution. The principal eigenvalues of the corresponding periodic eigenvalue problem at the initial position and infinity are defined as $\lambda^{\vartriangle}_{1}(h_{0})$ and $\lambda^{\vartriangle}_{1}(\infty)$, respectively. They both depend on the impulse intensity $1-G'(0)$ and expansion capacities $\mu_{1}$ and $\mu_{2}$. The possible long time dynamical behaviours of the model are next explored in terms of $\lambda^{\vartriangle}_{1}(h_{0})$ and $\lambda^{\vartriangle}_{1}(\infty)$: if $\lambda^{\vartriangle}_{1}(\infty)\geq 0$, then the diseases are vanishing; if $\lambda^{\vartriangle}_{1}(\infty)<0$ and $\lambda^{\vartriangle}_{1}(h_{0})\leq 0$, then the disease are spreading; if $\lambda^{\vartriangle}_{1}(\infty)<0$ and $\lambda^{\vartriangle}_{1}(h_{0})> 0$, then for any given $\mu_{1}$, there exists a $\mu_{0}$ such that spreading happens as $\mu_{2}\in( \mu_{0},+\infty)$, and vanishing happens as $\mu_{2}\in(0, \mu_{0})$. Finally, numerical examples are presented to corroborate the correctness of the obtained theoretical findings and to further understand the influence of an impulsive intervention and expansion capacity on the spreading of the diseases. Our results show that both the increase of impulse intensity and the decrease of expansion capacity have a positive contribution to the prevention and control of the diseases.