A non-linear reaction–diffusion system with cross-diffusion describing the COVID-19 outbreak is studied using the Lie symmetry method. A complete Lie symmetry classification is derived and it is shown that the system with correctly specified parameters admits highly non-trivial Lie symmetry operators, which do not occur for all known reaction–diffusion systems. The symmetries obtained are also applied for finding exact solutions of the system in the most interesting case from applicability point of view. It is shown that the exact solutions derived possess typical properties for describing the pandemic spread under 1D approximation in space and lead to the distributions, which qualitatively correspond to the measured data of the COVID-19 spread in Ukraine.
