INVESTIGATING THE IMPACT OF SOCIOECONOMIC LEVEL ON THE BURDEN OF COVID-19 AND CHOLERA CO-DYNAMICS IN HAITI

In this work, we present a deterministic model to examine how socioeconomic levels affect the co-dynamics of COVID-19 and cholera in the Haitian community. The threshold quantities called the basic and control reproduction numbers of both diseases were obtained by using the next-generation matrix method. To validate the model’s ability to predict a realistic result, each respective sub-model was fitted using the reported number of COVID-19 cases from March 20, 2020 to June 25, 2023 and the reported number of cholera cases from October 8, 2022 to August 26, 2023 from Haiti. A numerical simulation was performed to investigate the impact of socioeconomic levels on the threshold quantities and the projected infected cases of each disease. The overall result shows that, in comparison to medium or low socioeconomic levels, a high socioeconomic level lowers the threshold reproduction number more efficiently. This suggests that the burden of COVID-19 and cholera would decrease if Haiti’s socioeconomic status was raised to a better standard and the diseases’ related reproduction numbers were kept below the disease-free thresholds. Additionally, our results show that improving socioeconomic status is essential to reducing the number of predicted COVID-19 and cholera cases among Haitians. Our results also established that cholera disease would dominate in the Haiti population and drive COVID-19 into extinction when they are both at their endemic equilibria (i.e., cholera will dominate when ${{ℛ}}_1>1$ and ${{ℛ}}_2>1$). However, for COVID-19 to dominate and drive cholera into extinction in the Haiti population, only COVID-19 must be in an endemic state (i.e., COVID-19 will dominate when ${{ℛ}}_1>1$ and ${{ℛ}}_2<1$). Based on the study’s findings, the government and policymakers of Haiti were advised to ensure that the country’s socioeconomic status is improved in order to lower the population’s burden of disease.