Transmission Dynamics of COVID-19 in Ghana and the Impact of Public Health Interventions

  1. Sylvia K. Ofori
  2. Jessica S. Schwind
  3. Kelly L. Sullivan
  4. Benjamin J. Cowling
  5. Gerardo Chowell
  6. Isaac Chun-Hai Fung

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Abstract

This study characterized COVID-19 transmission in Ghana in 2020 and 2021 by estimating the time-varying reproduction number ( R t ) and exploring its association with various public health interventions at the national and regional levels. Ghana experienced four pandemic waves, with epidemic peaks in July 2020 and January, August, and December 2021. The epidemic peak was the highest nationwide in December 2021 with R t ≥ 2. Throughout 2020 and 2021, per-capita cumulative case count by region increased with population size. Mobility data suggested a negative correlation between R t and staying home during the first 90 days of the pandemic. The relaxation of movement restrictions and religious gatherings was not associated with increased R t in the regions with fewer case burdens. R t decreased from > 1 when schools reopened in January 2021 to < 1 after vaccination rollout in March 2021. Findings indicated most public health interventions were associated with R t reduction at the national and regional levels.

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  1. Version published to 10.4269/ajtmh.21-0718
  2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.07.04.21259991v2 on medRxiv
  3. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.07.04.21259991: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    10 Google mobility data: The mobility data was sourced from Google to analyze changes in the number of visits to places in the following categories: (a) grocery and pharmacy, (b) parks, (c) transit stations, (d) retail and recreation, (e) residential, and (f) workplaces.11 The data provides information for how visits and duration of staying at different places changes compared to baseline values which is the median value for the corresponding day of the week, during the five weeks of January 3 — February 6, 2020.
    Google
    suggested: (Google, RRID:SCR_017097)

    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 found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).

    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.
    • Thank you for including a protocol registration statement.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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  4. Version published to 10.1101/2021.07.04.21259991v1 on medRxiv