Optimal control of a social epidemic model with media coverage

Abstract

A new social epidemic model to depict alcoholism with media coverage is proposed in this paper. Some fundamental properties of the model including existence and positivity as well as boundedness of equilibria are investigated. Stability of all equilibria are studied. The existence of the optimal control pair and mathematical expressions of optimal control are obtained by Pontryagin’s maximum principle. Numerical simulations are also performed to illustrate our results. Our results show that media coverage is an effective measure to quit drinking.