Modeling the dynamics of coronavirus with super-spreader class: A fractal-fractional approach

Super-spreaders of the novel coronavirus disease (or COVID-19) are those with greater potential for disease transmission to infect other people. Understanding and isolating the super-spreaders are important for controlling the COVID-19 incidence as well as future infectious disease outbreaks. Many scientific evidences can be found in the literature on reporting and impact of super-spreaders and super-spreading events on the COVID-19 dynamics. This paper deals with the formulation and simulation of a new epidemic model addressing the dynamics of COVID-19 with the presence of super-spreader individuals. In the first step, we formulate the model using classical integer order nonlinear differential system composed of six equations. The individuals responsible for the disease transmission are further categorized into three sub-classes, i.e., the symptomatic, super-spreader and asymptomatic. The model is parameterized using the actual infected cases reported in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in order to enhance the biological suitability of the study. Moreover, to analyze the impact of memory index, we extend the model to fractional case using the well-known Caputo–Fabrizio derivative. By making use of the Picard-Lindelöf theorem and fixed point approach, we establish the existence and uniqueness criteria for the fractional-order model. Furthermore, we applied the novel fractal-fractional operator in Caputo–Fabrizio sense to obtain a more generalized model. Finally, to simulate the models in both fractional and fractal-fractional cases, efficient iterative schemes are utilized in order to present the impact of the fractional and fractal orders coupled with the key parameters (including transmission rate due to super-spreaders) on the pandemic peaks.