Forecasting COVID-19 Pandemic in Mozambique and Estimating Possible Scenarios

Paulo, Cl'audio Mois'es; Fontinele, Felipe Nunes; Cintra, Pedro Henrique Pinheiro

COVID-19 is now the largest pandemic crisis of this century, with over 16 million registered cases worldwide. African countries have now begun registering an increasing number of cases, yet, not many models developed focus in specific African countries. In our study we use a simple SEIR model to evaluate and predict future scenarios regarding the pandemic crisis in Mozambique. We compare the effect of different policies on the infection curve and estimate epidemiological parameters such as the current infection reproduction number Rt and the growth rate g. We have found a low value for Rt, ranging from 1.11 to 1.48 and a positive growth rate, between g = 0.22 to 0.27. Our simulations also suggest that a lockdown shows potential for reducing the infection peak height in 28%, on average, ranging from 20 to 36%.