Global co-dynamics of viral infections with saturated incidence

Several mathematical models of two competing viruses (or viral strains) that have been published in the literature assume that the infection rate is determined by bilinear incidence. These models do not show co-existence equilibrium; moreover, they might not be applicable in situations where the virus concentration is high. In this paper, we developed a mathematical model for the co-dynamics of two competing viruses with saturated incidence. The model included the latently infected cells and three types of time delays: discrete (or distributed): (ⅰ) The formation time of latently infected cells; (ⅱ) The activation time of latently infected cells; (ⅲ) The maturation time of newly released virions. We established the mathematical well-posedness and biological acceptability of the model by examining the boundedness and nonnegativity of the solutions. Four equilibrium points were identified, and their stability was examined. Through the application of Lyapunov's approach and LaSalle's invariance principle, we demonstrated the global stability of equilibria. The impact of saturation incidence, latently infected cells, and time delay on the viral co-dynamics was examined. We demonstrated that the saturation could result in persistent viral coinfections. We established conditions under which these types of viruses could coexist. The coexistence conditions were formulated in terms of saturation constants. These findings offered new perspectives on the circumstances under which coexisting viruses (or strains) could live in stable viral populations. It was shown that adding the class of latently infected cells and time delay to the coinfection model reduced the basic reproduction number for each virus type. Therefore, fewer treatment efficacies would be needed to keep the system at the infection-free equilibrium and remove the viral coinfection from the body when utilizing a model with latently infected cells and time delay. To demonstrate the associated mathematical outcomes, numerical simulations were conducted for the model with discrete delays.