Optimal control of deterministic epidemics

Various deterministic optimal control models for SIR-epidemics are investigated in this paper. The epidemics are governed by a rather general interaction, which covers most cases studied in the literature. Vaccination, quarantine, screening or health promotion campaigns as forms of control are considered. In all cases one finds a maximum effort control on some initial time interval. In addition, uniqueness and monotonicity properties of these models are studied. The results are also extended to the infinite time-horizon situation.