Global stability of latency-age/stage-structured epidemic models with differential infectivity

In this paper, we first formulate a system of ODEs–PDE to model diseases with latency-age and differential infectivity. Then, based on the ways how latent individuals leave the latent stage, one ODE and two DDE models are derived. We only focus on the global stability of the models. All the models have some similarities in the existence of equilibria. Each model has a threshold dynamics for global stability, which is completely characterized by the basic reproduction number. The approach is the Lyapunov direct method. We propose an idea on constructing Lyapunov functionals for the two DDE and the original ODEs–PDE models. During verifying the negative (semi-)definiteness of derivatives of the Lyapunov functionals along solutions, a novel positive definite function and a new inequality are used. The idea here is also helpful in applying the Lyapunov direct method to prove the global stability of some epidemic models with age structure or delays.