Modelling the adverse impacts of urbanization on human health

Abstract

Abstract Urbanization has been a growing trend for decades, but the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has accelerated this trend in several ways. In many countries, the pandemic has prompted significant investments in urban health infrastructure, including hospitals, clinics, and public health facilities. Also, there are many studies suggesting that COVID-19, urbanization, and chronic diseases are interconnected in several ways, and addressing one aspect requires a comprehensive approach that considers the interconnectedness of these factors. To date, there are no studies depicting COVID-19 as a cause of emerging chronic diseases within the urban population. To address this sensitive issue, we propose a mathematical model in which we divide the total human population into three compartments: susceptible, diseased, and recovered. We have obtained the equilibrium points of the model and the conditions for their local stabilities. A suitable Lyapunov function has been used to derive the condition for the global stability of the nontrivial equilibrium point. A detailed numerical simulation of the model has been carried out, which is followed by sensitivity analysis of the model system.