Epidemic thresholds in a heterogenous population with competing strains

Among many epidemic models, one epidemic disease may transmit with the existence of other pathogens or other strains from the same pathogen. In this paper, we consider the case where all of the strains obey the susceptible-infected-susceptible mechanism and compete with each other at the expense of common susceptible individuals. By using the heterogenous mean-field approach, we discuss the epidemic threshold for one of two strains. We confirm the existence of epidemic threshold in both finite and infinite populations subject to underlying epidemic transmission. Simulations in the Barabasi-Albert (BA) scale-free networks are in good agreement with the analytical results.