Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comment
. 2020 Jun 9:148:e113.
doi: 10.1017/S095026882000120X.

Evaluation of modelling study shows limits of COVID-19 importing risk simulations in sub-Saharan Africa

T Miyachi  1 , T Tanimoto  1 , M Kami  1
Affiliations
Comment

Evaluation of modelling study shows limits of COVID-19 importing risk simulations in sub-Saharan Africa

T Miyachi et al. Epidemiol Infect. .

Abstract

Mathematical modelling studies predicting the spread of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have been used worldwide, but precisions are limited. Thus, continuous evaluation of the modelling studies is crucial. We investigated situations of virus importation in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to assess effectiveness of a modelling study by Haider N et al. titled 'Passengers' destinations from China: low risk of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) transmission into Africa and South America'. We obtained epidemiological data of 2417 COVID-19 cases reported by 40 countries in SSA within 30 days of the first case confirmed in Nigeria on 27 February. Out of 442 cases which had travel history available, only one (0.2%) had a travel history to China. These findings underline the result of the model. However, the fact that there were numbers of imported cases from other regions shows the limits of the model. The limits could be attributed to the characteristics of the COVID-19 which is infectious even when the patients do not express any symptoms. Therefore, there is a profound need for all modelling researchers to take asymptomatic cases into account when they establish modelling studies.

Keywords: COVID-19; mathematical modelling.

PubMed Disclaimer

Comment in

Comment on

References

    1. Haider N, et al. (2020) Passengers’ destinations from China: low risk of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) transmission into Africa and South America. Epidemiology and Infection 148, e41, 1–7. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Adam D (2020) The simulations driving the world's response to COVID-19. Nature 580, 316–318. - PubMed
    1. El-Sadr WM and Justman J (2020) Africa in the path of Covid-19. The New England Journal of Medicine. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp2008193. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Laura AS, et al. (2020) Seeding COVID-19 across sub-Saharan Africa: an analysis of reported importation events across 40 countries. medrxiv, 6 April 2020. 10.1101/2020.04.01.20050203. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gandhi M, Yokoe DS and Havlir DV (2020) Asymptomatic transmission, the Achilles’ heel of current strategies to control Covid-19. The New England Journal of Medicine 382, 2158–2160. doi: 10.1056/NEJMe2009758. - DOI - PMC - PubMed