Existence of periodic solutions for the periodically forced SIR model

Abstract

We prove that the seasonally-forced SIR model with a T-periodic forcing has a periodic solution with period T whenever the basic reproductive number R0>1. The proof uses the Leray-Schauder degree theory. We also describe some numerical results in which we compute the T-periodic solution, where in order to obtain the T-periodic solution when the behavior of the system is subharmonic or chaotic, we use a Galerkin scheme.