The impact of COVID-19 on a Malaria dominated region: A mathematical analysis and simulations

ABSTRACT

One of society's major concerns that have continued for a long time is infectious diseases. It has been demonstrated that certain disease infections, in particular multiple disease infections, make it more challenging to identify and treat infected individuals, thus deteriorating human health. As a result, a COVID-19-malaria co-infection model is developed and analyzed to study the effects of threshold quantities and co-infection transmission rate on the two diseases' synergistic relation-ship. This allowed us to better understand the co-dynamics of the two diseases in the population. The existence and stability of the disease-free equilibrium of each single infection were first inves-tigated by using their respective reproduction number. The COVID-19 and malaria-free equilibrium are locally asymptotically stable when the individual threshold quantities RC and RM are below unity. Additionally, the occurrence of the malaria prevalent equilibrium is examined, and the requirements for the backward bifurcation's existence are provided. Sensitivity analysis reveals that the two main parameters that influence the spread of COVID-19 infection are the disease transmis-sion rate (bc) and the fraction of the exposed individuals becoming symptomatic (w), while malaria transmission is influenced by the abundance of vector population, which is driven by recruitment rate (pv) with an increase in the effective biting rate (b), probability of malaria transmission per mosquito bite (bm), and probability of malaria transmission from infected humans to vectors (bv). The findings from the numerical simulation of the model show that COVID-19 will predom-inate in the populace and drives malaria to extinction when RM < 1 < RC, whereas malaria will dominate in the population and drives COVID-19 into extinction when RC < 1 < RM. At the dis-ease's endemic equilibrium, the two diseases will coexist with the one with the highest reproduction number predominating but not eradicating the other. It was demonstrated in particular that COVID-19 will invade a population where malaria is endemic if the invasion reproduction number exceeds unity. The findings also demonstrate that when the two diseases are at endemic equilibrium,the prevalence of co-infection increases COVID-19's burden on the population while decreasing malaria incidence. (c) 2022 THE AUTHORS. Published by Elsevier BV on behalf of Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http//creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).