Modeling the effects of prosocial awareness on COVID-19 dynamics: A case study on Colombia

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has affected most of the countries on Earth. It has become a pandemic outbreak with more than 24 million confirmed infections and above 840 thousand deaths worldwide. In this study, we consider a mathematical model on COVID-19 transmission with the prosocial awareness effect. The proposed model can have four equilibrium states based on different parametric conditions. The local and global stability conditions for awareness free, disease-free equilibrium is studied. Using Lyapunov function theory and LaSalle Invariance Principle, the disease-free equilibrium is shown globally asymptotically stable under some parametric constraints. The existence of unique awareness free, endemic equilibrium and unique endemic equilibrium is presented. We calibrate our proposed model parameters to fit daily cases and deaths from Colombia. Sensitivity analysis indicates that the transmission rate and learning factor related to awareness of susceptibles are very crucial for reduction in disease related deaths. Finally, we assess the impact of prosocial awareness during the outbreak and compare this strategy with popular control measures. Results indicate that prosocial awareness has competitive potential to flatten the curve.