Spatio-temporal evolution of the COVID-19 across African countries

Bechir Naffeti; Sebastien Bourdin; Walid Ben Aribi; Amira Kebir; Slimane Ben Miled

doi:10.3389/fpubh.2022.1039925

Spatio-temporal evolution of the COVID-19 across African countries

Front Public Health. 2022 Nov 28:10:1039925. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.1039925. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Bechir Naffeti¹, Sebastien Bourdin², Walid Ben Aribi¹, Amira Kebir^{1

3}, Slimane Ben Miled¹

Affiliations

¹ Laboratory of BioInformatics, bioMathematics and bioStatistics, Institute Pasteur of Tunis, Tunis, Tunisia.
² Métis Lab, EM Normandie Business School, Le Havre, France.
³ Preparatory Institute for Engineering Studies of Tunis, University of Tunis, Tunis, Tunisia.

Abstract

The aim of this study is to make a comparative study on the reproduction number R ₀ computed at the beginning of each wave for African countries and to understand the reasons for the disparities between them. The study covers the two first years of the COVID-19 pandemic and for 30 African countries. It links pandemic variables, reproduction number R ₀, demographic variable, median age of the population, economic variables, GDP and CHE per capita, and climatic variables, mean temperature at the beginning of each waves. The results show that the diffusion of COVID-19 in Africa was heterogeneous even between geographical proximal countries. The difference of the basic reproduction number R ₀ values is very large between countries and is significantly correlated with economic and climatic variables GDP and temperature and to a less extent with the mean age of the population.

Keywords: Africa; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; SIR model; epidemiology; regional analysis; reproduction number R0.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Africa / epidemiology
African People
COVID-19* / epidemiology
Humans
Pandemics
SARS-CoV-2