COVID-19 PREDICTION IN SOUTH AFRICA: ESTIMATING THE UNASCERTAINED CASES- THE HIDDEN PART OF THE EPIDEMIOLOGICAL ICEBERG.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions as well as accounting for the unascertained cases remain critical challenges for epidemiological models for understanding the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 spread. In this paper, we propose a new epidemiological model (eSEIRD) that extends the widely used epidemiological models such as extended Susceptible-Infected-Removed model (eSIR) and SAPHIRE (initially developed and used for analyzing data from Wuhan). We fit these models to the daily ascertained infected (and removed) cases from March 15, 2020 to Dec 31, 2020 in South Africa that reported the largest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths from the WHO African region. Using the eSEIRD model, the COVID-19 transmission dynamics in South Africa was characterized by

SUBMITTER: Gu X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7743090 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature