Dynamic analysis of a stochastic epidemic model incorporating the double epidemic hypothesis and Crowley-Martin incidence term

Abstract

The host population in epidemiology may actually be at risk of more than two infectious diseases with stochastic complicated interaction, e.g., HIV and HBV. In this paper, we propose a class of stochastic epidemic model that applies the double epidemic hypothesis and Crowley-Martin incidence rate in order to explore how stochastic disturbances affect the spread of diseases. While disregarding stochastic disturbances, we examine the dynamic features of the system in which the local stability of equilibria are totally determined by the basic reproduction numbers. We focus particularly on the threshold dynamics of the corresponding stochastic system, and we obtain the extinction and permanency conditions for a pair of infectious diseases. We find that the threshold dynamics of the deterministic and stochastic systems vary significantly: (ⅰ) disease outbreaks can be controlled by appropriate stochastic disturbances; (ⅱ) diseases die out when the intensity of environmental perturbations is higher. The effects of certain important parameters on deterministic and stochastic disease transmission were obtained through numerical simulations. Our observations indicate that controlling epidemics should improve the effectiveness of prevention measures for susceptible individuals while improving the effectiveness of treatment for infected individuals.