SARS‑CoV‑2 incidence monitoring and statistical estimation of the basic and time‑varying reproduction number at the early onset of the pandemic in 45 sub‑Saharan African countries
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Date
2024
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
BMC Public Health
Abstract
The world battled to defeat a novel coronavirus 2019 (SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19), a respiratory illness that is transmitted
from person to person through contacts with droplets from infected persons. Despite efforts to disseminate
preventable messages and adoption of mitigation strategies by governments and the World Health Organization
(WHO), transmission spread globally. An accurate assessment of the transmissibility of the coronavirus remained
a public health priority for many countries across the world to fight this pandemic, especially at the early onset. In
this paper, we estimated the transmission potential of COVID-19 across 45 countries in sub-Saharan Africa using three
approaches, namely, R0 based on (i) an exponential growth model (ii) maximum likelihood (ML) estimation and (iii)
a time-varying basic reproduction number at the early onset of the pandemic. Using data from March 14, 2020,
to May 10, 2020, sub-Saharan African countries were still grappling with COVID-19 at that point in the pandemic.
The region’s basic reproduction number ( R0 ) was 1.89 (95% CI: 1.767 to 2.026) using the growth model and 1.513
(95% CI: 1.491 to 1.535) with the maximum likelihood method, indicating that, on average, infected individuals
transmitted the virus to less than two secondary persons. Several countries, including Sudan ( R0 : 2.03), Ghana ( R0 :
1.87), and Somalia ( R0 : 1.85), exhibited high transmission rates. These findings highlighted the need for continued
vigilance and the implementation of effective control measures to combat the pandemic in the region. It is anticipated
that the findings in this study would not only function as a historical record of reproduction numbers during
the COVID-19 pandemic in African countries, but can serve as a blueprint for addressing future pandemics
of a similar nature.
Description
Research Article
Keywords
COVID-19, Infectious disease, Basic reproduction number, Sub-Saharan Africa, Transmission