Ebola virus disease outbreak in Nigeria: transmission dynamics and rapid control

Althaus, Christian L.; Low, Nicola; Musa, Emmanuel; Shuaib, Faisal; Gsteiger, Sandro

doi:10.7287/peerj.preprints.569

Cited by 18 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 17 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…In many studies, model parameters were derived from models of past Ebola outbreaks [23,24] and/or early published models of the current Ebola epidemic [9,25]. For instance, Althaus' study in 2014 [26] adopted estimates of incubation and infectious periods from the 1995 EVD outbreak in Congo, and the team published a study for Nigeria in 2015 [27] that incorporated the estimated incubation period from a 1976 EVD outbreak in Zaire.…”

Section: Overview Of Evd Modelling Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A systematic review of early modelling studies of Ebola virus disease in West Africa

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

SUMMARYPhenomenological and mechanistic models are widely used to assist resource planning for pandemics and emerging infections. We conducted a systematic review, to compare methods and outputs of published phenomenological and mechanistic modelling studies pertaining to the 2013-2016 Ebola virus disease (EVD) epidemics in four West African countries -Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and Nigeria. We searched Pubmed, Embase and Scopus databases for relevant English language publications up to December 2015. Of the 874 articles identified, 41 met our inclusion criteria. We evaluated these selected studies based on: the sources of the case data used, and modelling approaches, compartments used, population mixing assumptions, model fitting and calibration approaches, sensitivity analysis used and data bias considerations. We synthesised results of the estimated epidemiological parameters: basic reproductive number (R 0 ), serial interval, latent period, infectious period and case fatality rate, and examined their relationships. The median of the estimated mean R 0 values were between 1·30 and 1·84 in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. Much higher R 0 value of 9·01 was described for Nigeria. We investigated several issues with uncertainty around EVD modes of transmission, and unknown observation biases from early reported case data. We found that epidemic models offered R 0 mean estimates which are country-specific, but these estimates are not associating with the use of several key disease parameters within the plausible ranges. We find simple models generally yielded similar estimates of R 0 compared with more complex models. Models that accounted for data uncertainty issues have offered a higher case forecast compared with actual case observation. Simple model which offers transparency to public health policy makers could play a critical role for advising rapid policy decisions under an epidemic emergency.

show abstract

Section: Overview Of Evd Modelling Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A systematic review of early modelling studies of Ebola virus disease in West Africa

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the latter case, it may be so that t max ≤ T . Therefore, at the second stage of our arguments we show the existence of such solution g(t) for system (23), that is defined on the entire interval [0, T ]. For this, we write the system in a matrix form.…”

Section: Properties Of the Switching Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our assumption was wrong. Therefore, there exists the solution g(t) for system (24), and hence for system (23), which is defined on the entire interval [0, T ]. Then, system (21) is also defined on this interval.…”

Section: Properties Of the Switching Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In these studies, as well as in the classic textbook on differential equations [15], it was noted that, when the initial conditions g j (0) = g 0 j , j = 1, 3 were added to system (23), an appropriate solution g(t) = (g 1 (t), g 2 (t), g 3 (t)) will be determined on the interval [0, t max ), which is the maximum possible interval for the existence of such solution, and either t max = +∞ or t max < +∞. In the latter case, it may be so that t max ≤ T .…”

Section: Properties Of the Switching Functionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These values are adopted from [5,6,[22][23][24] and based on actual data of Ebola epidemics. Figures 1-3 show the graphs of the optimal solutions S * (t), E * (t), I * (t), R * (t) for Ebola epidemics in Zaire (1976), Uganda (2000), and Liberia (2014), respectively.…”

Section: Numerical Simulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Optimal Intervention Strategies for a SEIR Control Model of Ebola Epidemics

Grigorieva

Хайлов

2015

Mathematics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

A SEIR control model describing the Ebola epidemic in a population of a constant size is considered over a given time interval. It contains two intervention control functions reflecting efforts to protect susceptible individuals from infected and exposed individuals. For this model, the problem of minimizing the weighted sum of total fractions of infected and exposed individuals and total costs of intervention control constraints at a given time interval is stated. For the analysis of the corresponding optimal controls, the Pontryagin maximum principle is used. According to it, these controls are bang-bang, and are determined using the same switching function. A linear non-autonomous system of differential equations, to which this function satisfies together with its corresponding auxiliary functions, is found. In order to estimate the number of zeroes of the switching function, the matrix of the linear non-autonomous system is transformed to an upper triangular form on the entire time interval and the generalized Rolle's theorem is applied to the converted system of differential equations. It is found that the optimal controls of the original problem have at most two switchings. This fact allows the reduction of the original complex optimal control problem to the solution of a much simpler problem of conditional minimization of a function of two variables. Results of the numerical solution to this problem and their detailed analysis are provided.

show abstract

Knowledge, attitude, and practice among healthcare workers towards COVID-19 outbreak in Nigeria

Ejeh

Saidu

Owoicho

et al. 2020

Heliyon

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Background: Severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is a global pandemic. Healthcare workers' (HCWs) role in patient management is predisposing and can serve as means of hospitals and community transmission. This study evaluated HCWs' knowledge, attitude, and practice towards COVID-19 in Nigeria. Methods: we carried out a cross-sectional survey among HCWs during the COVID-19 outbreak in Nigeria from March to June 2020. The study assessed 346 HCWs for Knowledge, attitude, and practice by using an online (Google form) self-administered questionnaire, based on a convinience sampling technique Data were retrieved and analyzed using descriptive statistics. Chi-Square and one-way ANOVA were used to measure association and difference among demographic variables. The relationship between knowledge, attitude, and practice was measured using Spearman's rho correlation test. Results: the mean knowledge score of the HCWs was 7.1 on a scale of 0-8. The correct overall rate of the knowledge questionnaire was 88.75%. Knowledge was gained mainly from television (35.0%) and social media (35.0%). The mean attitude score on a scale of 0-6 was 5.31 AE 0.39. Most (92.5%) participants were confident that Nigerian medical scientists would win the war against COVID-19. The majority (92.2%) of the respondents thought that SARS-CoV-2 was not a biological weapon. About 1 out of 5 respondents held that faith healing or prayer is the only cure for COVID-19. A vast majority of the HCWs were taking precautionary measures such as avoiding crowded places (94.2%), washing of hands (96.0%), and the use of personal protective equipment (91.6%) against SARS-CoV-2 infection. Nevertheless, only 3 out of 5 HCWs used a face mask when leaving home. There was a significant (p ¼ 0.046) positive correlation (0.584) between knowledge and attitude. Conclusion: our results showed that HCWs in Nigeria had excellent knowledge and possessed a positive attitude and good practice towards COVID-19. However; there were areas where poor knowledge, negative attitudes and unacceptable practices were observed. We recommend continuous public health education of HCWs on SARS-COV-2 infection control and prevention.

show abstract

Ebola virus disease outbreak in Nigeria: transmission dynamics and rapid control

Cited by 18 publications

References 17 publications

A systematic review of early modelling studies of Ebola virus disease in West Africa

A systematic review of early modelling studies of Ebola virus disease in West Africa

Optimal Intervention Strategies for a SEIR Control Model of Ebola Epidemics

Knowledge, attitude, and practice among healthcare workers towards COVID-19 outbreak in Nigeria

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About