Analysis of a diffusive host–pathogen epidemic model with two‐stage mechanism in a spatially heterogeneous environment

Abstract

Due to the spatial heterogeneity present in many aspects of disease transmission, the rate of transmission of infectious diseases, human birth/mortality rate, and the mobility ability of infected humans should be different in different geographical locations. On the other hand, infected humans may exhibit distinct differences in symptoms during the different stages of the disease transmission. This paper aims to study threshold dynamics of a reaction–diffusion host–pathogen model governed by two‐stage mechanism and no flux boundary condition. In the model, we use bilinear and saturated incidence mechanism to model the interactions between host populations and pathogens and assume that (i) the parameters are spatially dependent and (ii) infected individuals in the first stage can random walk, while in the second stage, the diffusion rates are neglected. By carrying out strict analysis, the paper establishes the threshold‐type results with the basic reproduction number. Specifically, in a homogeneous case that all parameters are constants, we establish the global attractivity of the endemic equilibrium. To investigate the effects of small or large diffusion rates of susceptible individuals on the disease transmission in a heterogeneous environment, we explore the asymptotic profile of positive steady state whenever it exists. Our numerical results validate the theoretical results and indicate the importance of the infected humans in the second stage and pathogens in the environment in disease transmission, which greatly contribute to disease spread in a bounded domain and should not be ignored.