Age-Structured SIR Model for the Spread of Infectious Diseases Through Indirect Contacts

Abstract

In this article, we discuss an age-structured SIR model in which disease spread not only through direct person-to-person contacts, but also spread through indirect contacts. It is evident that age also plays a crucial role in SARS virus infection including COVID-19 infection. We formulate our model as an abstract semilinear Cauchy problem in an appropriate Banach space to show the existence of solution and also show the existence of steady states. In this study, it is assumed that the population is in a demographic stationary state and we show that there is no disease-free equilibrium point as long as there is a transmission of infection due to the indirect contacts in the environment. We also solved our model numerically to study the effect of indirect contacts on the density of infected individuals.