A delayed reaction–diffusion viral infection model with nonlinear incidences and cell-to-cell transmission

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a reaction–diffusion viral infection model with nonlinear incidences, cell-to-cell transmission, and a time delay. We impose the homogeneous Neumann boundary condition. For the case where the domain is bounded, we first study the well-posedness. Then we analyze the local stability of homogeneous steady states. We establish a threshold dynamics which is completely characterized by the basic reproduction number. For the case where the domain is the whole Euclidean space, we consider the existence of traveling wave solutions by using the cross-iteration method and Schauder’s fixed point theorem. Finally, we study how the speed of spread in space affects the spread of cells and viruses. We obtain the existence of the wave speed, which is dependent on the diffusion coefficient.