An eradication time problem for the SIR model

Abstract: We consider a susceptible, infected, and recovered infectious disease model which incorporates a vaccination rate. In particular, we study the problem of choosing the vaccination rate in order to reduce the number of infected individuals to a given threshold as quickly as possible. This is naturally a problem of time-optimal control. We interpret the optimal time as a solution of two dynamic programming equations and give necessary and sufficient conditions for a vaccination rate to be optimal.