Global stability of an SIQR switched model with multiple two-threshold structures

Prevention and control strategies play an essential role in reducing new infections of infectious diseases, while uniform and instantaneous responses to disease outbreaks are assumed in traditional epidemic models. To model the adaptive public health policies that account for hysteresis effects and heterogeneous control measures, we proposed an SIQR epidemic model with multiple two-threshold structures to describe the prevalence-dependent real-time control strategies. The formulated model incorporated the Preisach operator which effectively characterizes time-varying control strategies that depend on the historical evolution of a disease. We established the global stability of this steady-state set through an innovative analytical approach by constructing a series of Lyapunov functions corresponding to different branches of the hysteresis operator. Specifically, our results indicate that: (i) heterogeneity facilitates the convergence of system trajectories to a point within the continuum of steady-state, and (ii) greater heterogeneity leads to higher peaks of infected individuals during the evolution of an epidemic and more severe disease prevalence in the long term. Our findings reveal that the hysteresis phenomenon in control events may lead to existence of a continuum of endemic equilibria, significantly altering the effectiveness of disease suppression strategies. These results provide a theoretical foundation for designing adaptive control policies, emphasizing the importance of incorporating past intervention effects in epidemic modeling.