Stability and codimension 2 bifurcations in an [formula omitted] model with incubation delay

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to investigate the complex nonlinear dynamics, such as the existence and effect of various types of bifurcations, in an infectious disease model system. An SIR delay model that accounts for saturated incidence, saturated treatment, and self-protection in the susceptible population is considered. The model system has a disease free equilibrium, and its local stability is determined by the basic reproduction number for any delay value. The existence of multiple endemic equilibria is obtained, and these equilibria may switch stability due to variation of bifurcation parameters. When incubation delay is zero, Bogdanov–Takens bifurcation occurs, which implies the existence of Hopf bifurcation, saddle–node, and homoclinic bifurcations. Thus, the disease will persist within or on the homoclinic loop and otherwise dies out. We also find the existence of backward bifurcation and forward (transcritical) bifurcation. The delay-induced stability switches are observed due to Hopf bifurcations, leading to endemic bubbles. Incubation delay affects the stability of equilibria when the model system has multiple endemic equilibria, so multi-stability is observed. Due to incubation delay, the two frequency Hopf–Hopf bifurcation and Bogdanov–Takens bifurcation are found. Thus, both codimension 1 and codimension 2 bifurcations in the effect of incubation delay are exhibited in this study. Numerically, we notice that with increasing incubation delay, the endemic equilibrium either changes stability (from stable to unstable or unstable to stable) or remains unstable with different frequencies of oscillations.