Quantifying early COVID-19 outbreak transmission in South Africa and exploring vaccine efficacy scenarios

Abstract

Word count for the Abstract: 199. AbstractBackground: COVID-19 has emerged and spread at great speed globally and has presented one of the greatest public health challenges in modern times with no proven cure or vaccine.Africa is still early in this epidemic, therefore the spectrum of disease severity is not yet clear. Methods:We used a mathematical model to fit to the observed cases of COVID-19 in South Africa to estimate the basic reproductive number and critical vaccination coverages to control the disease for different hypothetical vaccine efficacy scenarios. We also estimated the percentage reduction in effective contacts due to the social distancing measures implemented. Results: Early model estimates show that COVID-19 outbreak in South Africa had a basic reproductive number of 2.95 (95% credible interval [CrI] 2.83-3.33). A vaccine with 70% efficacy had the capacity to contain COVID-19 outbreak but at very higher vaccination coverage 94.44% (95% Crl 92.44-99.92%) with a vaccine of 100% efficacy requiring 66.10% (95% Crl 64.72-69.95%) coverage. Social distancing measures put in place have so far reduced the number of social contacts by 80.31% (95% Crl 79.76-80.85%). Conclusions:Findings suggest a highly efficacious vaccine would have been required to contain COVID-19 in South Africa. Therefore, the current social distancing measures to reduce contacts will remain key in controlling the infection in the absence of vaccines and other therapeutics.

The Impact of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions on the First COVID-19 Epidemic Wave in South Africa

“…However, the distribution and management of these resources is an important factor that needs to be assessed to develop adequate conclusions regarding the preparedness of the South African health care system in the first COVID-19 epidemic wave. [26][27][28][30][31][32]92]. In this review, we explore COVID-19 models which had a significant influence on South Africa's policy response to COVID-19 and the ARI COVID-19 Model.…”

“…COVID-19 has been widely modelled with variations of the SEIR model [26][27][28][29][30][31][32]. One of the earliest Global COVID-19 transmission models to be published was the Imperial College London COVID-19 Model [28,33].…”

Mathematical model of COVID-19 with comorbidity and controlling using non-pharmaceutical interventions and vaccination

“…Moreover, various authors [36,37] have applied optimal control theory for mitigation of COVID-19. Different authors studied the vaccination process in COVID-19, and incorporating NPIs in the vaccination process has not been yet studied according to our knowledge [38,39]. Upadhyay et al [40] have analyzed the effectiveness of social distancing measures which has been implemented in the early stages of infection.…”

Spatiotemporal transmission dynamics of the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on critical healthcare capacity

“…Spatiotemporal analysis can inform forecasting of the potential future burden of the disease, help identify drivers of local transmission and populations at higher risk, and guide the designing of targeted interventions in resource limited settings ( Wilson and Halperin, 2008 ; Meyer-Rath et al, 2018 ). In the context of the novel COVID-19, most studies have focused in understanding the temporal dynamics of COVID-19 to produce temporal trajectories of the disease under different populations and intervention scenarios ( Kucharski et al, 2020 ; Prem et al, 2020 ; Hellewell et al, 2020 ; Ayoub et al, 2020a ; Mukandavire et al, 2020 ), with some few studies assessing the spatio-temporal dynamics of the disease ( Huang et al, 2020 ; Gatto et al, 2020 ; Jia et al, 2020 ).…”