Dynamics of an Infectious Disease Where Media Coverage Influences Transmission

Abstract

There is significant current interest in the application of media/psychosocial effects to problems in epidemiology. News reporting has the potential to reach and to modify the knowledge, attitudes, and behavior of a large proportion of the community. A susceptible-infected-hospitalized-recovered model with vital dynamics, where media coverage of disease incidence and disease prevalence can influence people to reduce their contact rates is formulated. The media function is incorporated into the model using an exponentially decreasing function. Qualitative analysis of the model reveals that the disease-free equilibrium is locally asymptotically stable when a certain threshold is less than unity. Numerical results show the potential short-term beneficial effect of media coverage.