Dynamical Analysis of Multipathways and Multidelays of General Virus Dynamics Model

This paper considers a general virus dynamics model with cell-mediated immune response and direct cell-to-cell infection modes. The model incorporates two types of intracellular distributed time delays and a discrete delay in the CTL immune response. Under certain conditions, the model exhibits a global threshold dynamics with respect to two parameters: the basic reproduction number and the reproduction number of immune response. We use suitable Lyapunov functionals and apply Lasalle's invariance principle to establish the global asymptotic stability of the two boundary equilibria. We also perform a bifurcation analysis for the positive equilibrium to show that the time delays may lead to sustained oscillations. To determine the direction of the Hopf bifurcation and the stability of the periodic solutions, the method of multiple time scales is applied. Finally, we carry out numerical simulations to illustrate our results.