Nonintegrability of the SEIR epidemic model

Abstract

We prove the nonintegrability of the susceptible-exposed-infected-removed (SEIR) epidemic model in the Bogoyavlenskij sense. This property of the SEIR model is different from the more fundamental susceptible-infected-removed (SIR) model, which is Bogoyavlenskij-nonintegrable. Our basic tool for the proof is an extension of the Morales-Ramis theory due to Ayoul and Zung. Moreover, we extend the system to a six-dimensional system to treat transcendental first integrals and commutative vector fields. We also use the fact that the incomplete gamma function $\Gamma(\alpha,x)$ is not elementary for $\alpha\not\in\mathbb{N}$, of which a proof is included.