Partial Differential Equations of an Epidemic Model with Spatial Diffusion

The aim of this paper is to study the dynamics of a reaction-diffusion SIR epidemic model with specific nonlinear incidence rate. The global existence, positivity, and boundedness of solutions for a reaction-diffusion system with homogeneous Neumann boundary conditions are proved. The local stability of the disease-free equilibrium and endemic equilibrium is obtained via characteristic equations. By means of Lyapunov functional, the global stability of both equilibria is investigated. More precisely, our results show that the disease-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable if the basic reproduction number is less than or equal to unity, which leads to the eradication of disease from population. When the basic reproduction number is greater than unity, then disease-free equilibrium becomes unstable and the endemic equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable; in this case the disease persists in the population. Numerical simulations are presented to illustrate our theoretical results.