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

dc.contributor.authorOduro, M.S.
dc.contributor.authorArhin‑Donkor, S.
dc.contributor.authorAsiedu, L.
dc.contributor.authorKadengye, D.T.
dc.contributor.authorIddi, S.
dc.date.accessioned2024-04-10T12:14:16Z
dc.date.available2024-04-10T12:14:16Z
dc.date.issued2024
dc.descriptionResearch Articleen_US
dc.description.abstractThe 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.en_US
dc.identifier.otherhttps://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-18184-8
dc.identifier.urihttp://ugspace.ug.edu.gh:8080/handle/123456789/41566
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherBMC Public Healthen_US
dc.subjectCOVID-19en_US
dc.subjectInfectious diseaseen_US
dc.subjectBasic reproduction numberen_US
dc.subjectSub-Saharan Africaen_US
dc.subjectTransmissionen_US
dc.titleSARS‑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 countriesen_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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