Mathematical model of COVID-19 spread in Turkey and South Africa: theory, methods, and applications

  1. Abdon Atangana
  2. Seda İğret Araz

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Abstract

A comprehensive study about the spread of COVID-19 cases in Turkey and South Africa has been presented in this paper. An exhaustive statistical analysis was performed using data collected from Turkey and South Africa within the period of 11 March 2020 to 3 May 2020 and 05 March and 3 of May, respectively. It was observed that in the case of Turkey, a negative Spearman correlation for the number of infected class and a positive Spearman correlation for both the number of deaths and recoveries were obtained. This implied that the daily infections could decrease, while the daily deaths and number of recovered people could increase under current conditions. In the case of South Africa, a negative Spearman correlation for both daily deaths and daily infected people were obtained, indicating that these numbers may decrease if the current conditions are maintained. The utilization of a statistical technique predicted the daily number of infected, recovered, and dead people for each country; and three results were obtained for Turkey, namely an upper boundary, a prediction from current situation and lower boundary. The histograms of the daily number of newly infected, recovered and death showed a sign of lognormal and normal distribution, which is presented using the Bell curving method parameters estimation. A new mathematical model COVID-19 comprised of nine classes was suggested; of which a formula of the reproductive number, well-poseness of the solutions and the stability analysis were presented in detail. The suggested model was further extended to the scope of nonlocal operators for each case; whereby a numerical method was used to provide numerical solutions, and simulations were performed for different non-integer numbers. Additionally, sections devoted to control optimal and others dedicated to compare cases between Turkey and South Africa with the aim to comprehend why there are less numbers of deaths and infected people in South Africa than Turkey were presented in detail.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.05.08.20095588: (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.

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  2. Version published to 10.1186/s13662-020-03095-w
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.08.20095588v2 on medRxiv
  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.05.08.20095588v1 on medRxiv