Modeling the Impact of Unreported Cases of the COVID-19 in the North African Countries

Djilali, Salih; Benahmadi, Lahbib; Tridane, Abdessamad; Niri, Khadija

SIMPLE SUMMARY: One of the challenges facing the countries to contain the COVID-19 is to trace people that were in contact with an infected person. Failing to identify the possible infected people leads to unreported cases of the COVID-19, which results in massive infection among the population and even superinfection events. In this work, we study the impact of the lockdown implemented by three North African countries on reducing the infections in the pandemic’s first wave. Then, we investigate the effect of the unreported cases in the increase of the number of infected people when each country relaxed the population’s mobility in the “Eid” period, resulting in the second wave of the COVID-19. ABSTRACT: In this paper, we study a mathematical model investigating the impact of unreported cases of the COVID-19 in three North African countries: Algeria, Egypt, and Morocco. To understand how the population respects the restriction of population mobility implemented in each country, we use Google and Apple’s mobility reports. These mobility reports help to quantify the effect of the population movement restrictions on the evolution of the active infection cases. We also approximate the number of the population infected unreported, the proportion of those that need hospitalization, and estimate the end of the epidemic wave. Moreover, we use our model to estimate the second wave of the COVID-19 Algeria and Morocco and to project the end of the second wave. Finally, we suggest some additional measures that can be considered to reduce the burden of the COVID-19 and would lead to a second wave of the spread of the virus in these countries.