Modeling and analysis of a fractional-order nonlinear epidemic model incorporating the compartments of infodemic and aware populations

Abstract

Abstract Whenever an epidemic outbreak emerges in society, false information regarding the disease’s transmission, cure, and control always spreads alongside the disease. People with inaccurate information about the disease can significantly contribute to disease spread by misleading others, which slows down the efforts of health professionals to control the disease and makes the control of the disease more difficult to achieve. Those who have consumed inaccurate information about the disease’s spread, control, and treatment and pass on this information to others without verifying its authenticity are referred to as ‘the infodemic population’ in the present study. The good news is that by educating and providing accurate information to the infodemic population, they can be made informed and aware. In the present study, we propose a five-compartmental (Susceptible-Infodemic-Aware-Infected-Recovered) fractional-order epidemic model with nonlinear incidences to capture the impact of the infodemic population along with the aware population on the disease transmission dynamics. The model is mathematically analyzed for two equilibria: the infection-free equilibrium and the positive equilibrium. With the help of the threshold parameter R 0 , known as the basic reproduction number, we analyze the local and global stabilities of both equilibria. We investigate that the infection-free equilibrium is locally and globally asymptotically stable when R 0 < 1 . Moreover, the positive equilibrium is locally and globally asymptotically stable when R 0 > 1 . Finally, we provide some numerical results in support of the theoretical results.