Assessment of the Impacts of Pharmaceutical and Non-pharmaceutical Intervention on COVID-19 in South Africa Using Mathematical Model

  1. Rabiu Musa
  2. Absalom E. Ezugwu
  3. Godwin C. E. Mbah

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Abstract

The novel coronal virus has spread across more than 213 countries within the space of six months causing devastating public health hazard and monumental economic loss. In the absence of clinically approved pharmaceutical intervention, attentions are shifted to non-pharmaceutical controls to mitigate the burden of the novel pandemic. In this regard, a ten mutually exclusive compartmental mathematical model is developed to investigate possible effects of both pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical controls incorporating both private and government’s quarantine and treatments. Several reproduction numbers were calculated and used to determine the impact of both control measures as well as projected benefits of social distancing, treatments and vaccination. We investigate and compare the possible impact of social distancing incorporating different levels of vaccination, with vaccination programme incorporating different levels of treatment. Using the officially published South African COVID-19 data, the numerical simulation shows that the community reproduction threshold will be 30 when there is no social distancing but will drastically reduced to 5 (about 83% reduction) when social distancing is enforced. Furthermore, when there is vaccination with perfect efficacy, the community reproduction threshold will be 4 which increases to 12 (about 67% increment) with-out vaccination. We also established that the implementation of both interventions is enough to curtail the spread of COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa which is in confirmation with the recommendation of the world health organization.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.11.13.20231159: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.11.13.20231159v1 on medRxiv