An age-distributed immuno-epidemiological model with information-based vaccination decision

Abstract

A new age-distributed immuno-epidemiological model with information-based vaccine uptake suggested in this work represents a system of integro-differential equations for the numbers of susceptible individuals, infected individuals, vaccinated individuals and recovered individuals. This model describes the influence of vaccination decision on epidemic progression in different age groups. We prove the existence and uniqueness of a positive solution using the fixed point theory. In a particular case of age-independent model, we determine the final size of epidemic, that is, the limiting number of susceptible individuals at asymptotically large time. Numerical simulations show that the information-based vaccine acceptance can significantly influence the epidemic progression. Though the initial stage of epidemic progression is the same for all memory kernels, as the epidemic progresses and more information about the disease becomes available, further epidemic progression strongly depends on the memory effect. Short-range memory kernel appears to be more effective in restraining the epidemic outbreaks because it allows for more responsive and adaptive vaccination decisions based on the most recent information about the disease.