Global dynamics of an infinite dimensional epidemic model with nonlocal state structures

In this paper, we derive and analyze a state-structured epidemic model for infectious diseases in which the state structure is nonlocal. The state is a measure of infectivity of infected individuals or the intensity of viral replications in infected cells. The model gives rise to a system of nonlinear integro-differential equations with a nonlocal term. We establish the well-posedness and dissipativity of the associated nonlinear semigroup. We establish an equivalent principal spectral condition between the linearized operator and the next-generation operator and show that the basic reproduction number R0 is a sharp threshold: if R0<1, the disease-free equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable, and if R0>1, the disease-free equilibrium is unstable and a unique endemic equilibrium is globally asymptotically stable. The proof of global stability of the endemic equilibrium utilizes a global Lyapunov function whose construction was motivated by the graph-theoretic method for coupled systems on networks developed in [24].