Mathematical Model of Co-Infection of Malaria and COVID-19 in Malaria-Endemic Population

Malaria and coronavirus disease (COVID-19) have been shown to exhibit clinical and pathological resemblances. The overlap in their characteristic symptoms led to the loss of many lives during the COVID-19 pandemic due to misdiagnosis and wrong treatment. In this paper, co-circulation and co-infection of malaria and coronavirus disease in a malaria-endemic population are modeled through a system of nonlinear ordinary differential equations, and the impact of wrong treatments on the dynamics of the two diseases and their co-infection is determined. The disease-free equilibrium of the model is shown to be both locally and globally asymptotically stable when the basic reproduction number is less than one. Sensitivity analysis reveals that wrong treatments positively impact the spread of malaria and COVID-19 in the population, which agrees with the result from numerical simulation. Moreover, numerical simulation shows that those infected with malaria dominate the infection space. This can be naturally attributed to the endemicity of malaria in the population.