All issues

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused increased interest in mathematical models of the epidemic process, since only statistical analysis of morbidity does not allow medium-term forecasting in a rapidly changing situation.

Among the specific features of COVID-19 that need to be taken into account in mathematical models are the heterogeneity of the pathogen, repeated changes in the dominant variant of SARS-CoV-2, and the relative short duration of post-infectious immunity.

In this regard, solutions to a system of differential equations for a SIR class model with a heterogeneous duration of post-infectious immunity were analytically studied, and numerical calculations were carried out for the dynamics of the system with an average duration of post-infectious immunity of the order of a year.

For a SIR class model with a heterogeneous duration of post-infectious immunity, it was proven that any solution can be continued indefinitely in time in a positive direction without leaving the domain of definition of the system.

For the contact number $R_0 \leqslant 1$, all solutions tend to a single trivial stationary solution with a zero share of infected people, and for $R_0 > 1$, in addition to the trivial solution, there is also a non-trivial stationary solution with non-zero shares of infected and susceptible people. The existence and uniqueness of a non-trivial stationary solution for $R_0 > 1$ was proven, and it was also proven that it is a global attractor.

Also, for several variants of heterogeneity, the eigenvalues of the rate of exponential convergence of small deviations from a nontrivial stationary solution were calculated.

It was found that for contact number values corresponding to COVID-19, the phase trajectory has the form of a twisting spiral with a period length of the order of a year.

This corresponds to the real dynamics of the incidence of COVID-19, in which, after several months of increasing incidence, a period of falling begins. At the same time, a second wave of incidence of a smaller amplitude, as predicted by the model, was not observed, since during 2020–2023, approximately every six months, a new variant of SARS-CoV-2 appeared, which was more infectious than the previous one, as a result of which the new variant replaced the previous one and became dominant.

The number of papers addressing the forecasting of the infectious disease morbidity is rapidly growing due to accumulation of available statistical data. This article surveys the major approaches for the shortterm and the long-term morbidity forecasting. Their limitations and the practical application possibilities are pointed out. The paper presents the conventional time series analysis methods — regression and autoregressive models; machine learning-based approaches — Bayesian networks and artificial neural networks; case-based reasoning; filtration-based techniques. The most known mathematical models of infectious diseases are mentioned: classical equation-based models (deterministic and stochastic), modern simulation models (network and agent-based).

Epidemic models are widely used to mimic social activity, such as spreading of rumors or panic. Simultaneously, models of excitable media are traditionally used to simulate the propagation of activity. Spreading of activity in the virtual community was simulated within two models: the SIRS epidemic model and the Wiener – Rosenblut model of the excitable media. We used network versions of these models. The network was assumed to be heterogeneous, namely, each element of the network has an individual set of characteristics, which corresponds to different psychological types of community members. The structure of a virtual network relies on an appropriate scale-free network. Modeling was carried out on scale-free networks with various values of the average degree of vertices. Additionally, a special case was considered, namely, a complete graph corresponding to a close professional group, when each member of the group interacts with each. Participants in a virtual community can be in one of three states: 1) potential readiness to accept certain information; 2) active interest to this information; 3) complete indifference to this information. These states correspond to the conditions that are usually used in epidemic models: 1) susceptible to infection, 2) infected, 3) refractory (immune or death due to disease). A comparison of the two models showed their similarity both at the level of main assumptions and at the level of possible modes. Distribution of activity over the network is similar to the spread of infectious diseases. It is shown that activity in virtual networks may experience fluctuations or decay.