Tracking and predicting the African COVID-19 pandemic

Ssentongo, Paddy; Fronterre, Claudio; Geronimo, Andrew; Greybush, Steven J.; Mbabazi, Pamela K.; Muvawala, Joseph; Nahalamba, Sarah B.; Omadi, Philip O.; Opar, Bernard T.; Sinnar, Shamim A.; Wang, Yan; Whalen, Andrew J.; Held, Leonhard; Jewell, Chris; Muwanguzi, Abraham J. B.; Greatrex, Helen; Norton, Michael M.; Diggle, Peter; Schiff, Steven J.

The ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is heterogeneous throughout Africa and threatening millions of lives. Surveillance and short-term modeling forecasts are critical to provide timely information for decisions on control strategies. We use a model that explains the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic over time in the entire African continent, parameterized by socioeconomic and geoeconomic variations and the lagged effects of social policy and meteorological history. We observed the effect of the human development index, containment policies, testing capacity, specific humidity, temperature and landlocked status of countries on the local within-country and external between-country transmission. One week forecasts of case numbers from the model were driven by the quality of the reported data. Seeking equitable behavioral and social interventions, balanced with coordinated country-specific strategies in infection suppression, should be a continental priority to control the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa.