https://doi.org/10.1140/epjs/s11734-025-02110-z
Regular Article
Critical scaling and nonlinear adaptative containment responses in epidemic dynamics modeling
1
Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, Pasteura 5, 02-093, Warsaw, Poland
2
Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal de Alagoas, 57072-900, Maceió-AL, Brazil
Received:
19
September
2025
Accepted:
15
December
2025
Published online:
22
December
2025
The dynamics of the recently introduced susceptible–infected–removed–quarantined (SIR-X) model is investigated in detail. We show that distinct dynamic transitions occur when the containment term affects either the susceptible and infected populations or just the infected one. We unveil the scaling behavior of the relevant epidemiological quantities in the vicinity of these dynamic transitions. Further, we extend the model to incorporate nonlinearities in the adaptative containment rates which result from a cooperative response to the epidemic evolution. We discuss how these nonlinearities change the typical epidemic curves. Data from the first COVID-19 epidemic wave from representative countries are shown to be well reproduced by the present nonlinear SIR-X model.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
