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Analysis and forecasting of confirmed, death, and recovered cases of COVID-19 infections in Nigeria: Implications for university administrators.

ABSTRACT:

Abstract

The coronavirus (COVID-19) disease outbreak was a public health emergency of international concern which eventually evolved into a pandemic. Nigeria was locked down in March, 2020 as the country battled to contain the spread of the disease. By August 2020, phase-by-phase easing of the lockdown was commenced and university students will soon return for academic activities. This study undertakes some epidemiological analysis of the Nigerian COVID-19 data to help the government and university administrators make informed decisions on the safety of personnel and students.The COVID-19 data on confirmed cases, deaths, and recovered were obtained from the website of the Nigerian Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) from April 2, 2020 to August 24, 2020. The infection rate, prevalence, ratio, cause-specific death rate, and case recovery rate were used to evaluate the epidemiological characteristics of the pandemic in Nigeria. Exponential smoothing was adopted in modeling the time series data and forecasting the pandemic in Nigeria up to January 31, 2021.The results indicated that the pandemic had infection rate of at most 3 infections per 1 million per day from April to August 2020. The death rate was 5 persons per 1 million during the period of study while recovery rate was 747 persons per 1000 infections. Analysis of forecast data showed steady but gradual decrease in the daily infection rate and death rate and substantial increase in the recovery rate, 975 recoveries per 1000 infections.In general, the epidemiological attributes of the pandemic from the original data and the forecast data indicated optimism in the decrease in the rate of infection and death in the future. Moreover, the infection rate, prevalence and death rate in January 2021 coincided with the predictions based on the analysis. Therefore, the Nigerian government is encouraged to allow universities in the country to reopen while university administrators set up the necessary protocols for strict adherence to safety measures.

SUBMITTER: Chigbu BC

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8341373 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:IntroductionAlthough environmental and human behavioral factors in countries with Zika virus (ZIKV) outbreaks are also common in Nigeria, such an outbreak has not yet been reported probably due to misdiagnosis. The atypical symptoms of malaria and ZIKV infections at the initial phase could leverage their misdiagnosis. This study randomly recruited 496 malaria-suspected patients who visited selected health institutions in Adamawa, Bauchi, and Borno states for malaria tests. These patients' sera were analyzed for ZIKV antibodies using ELISA and plaque reduction neutralization tests (PRNT) at 90% endpoint. About 13.8% of Zika virus-neutralizing antibodies (nAb) did not cross-react with dengue, yellow fever, and West Nile viruses suggesting possible monotypic infections. However, 86% of the sera with ZIKV nAb also neutralized other related viruses at varied degrees: dengue viruses (60.7%), West Nile viruses (23.2%), yellow fever virus (7.1%) and 39.3% were co-infections with chikungunya viruses. Notably, the cross-reactions could also reflect co-infections as these viruses are also endemic in the country. The serum dilution that neutralized 90-100% ZIKV infectivity ranged from 1:8 to 1:128. Also, our findings suggest distinct protection against the ZIKV between different collection sites studied. As indicated by nAb, acute ZIKV infection was detected in 1.7% of IgM-positive patients while past infections occurred in 8.5% of IgM-negatives in the three states. In Borno State, 9.4% of IgG neutralized ZIKV denoting past infections while 13.5% were non-neutralizing IgM and IgG indicating other related virus infections. The age, gender, and occupation of the patients and ZIKV nAb were not significantly different. ZIKV nAb from samples collected within 1-7 days after the onset of symptoms was not significantly different from those of 7-10 days. A wider interval with the same techniques in this study may probably give better diagnostic outcomes. ZIKV nAb was significantly distinct among recipients and non-recipients of antibiotic/antimalaria treatments before seeking malaria tests. The inhibiting effect of these drugs on ZIKV infection progression may probably contribute to the absence of neurological disorders associated with the virus despite being endemic in the environment for several decades. Also, protection against ZIKV as marked by the nAb was different among the vaccinated and unvaccinated YF vaccine recipients. Thus, the YF vaccine may be a good alternative to the Zika vaccine in resource-constrained countries.ConclusionThe cryptic ZIKV infections underscore the need for differential diagnosis of malaria-suspected febrile patients for arboviruses, especially the Zika virus. The absence of systemic surveillance for the virus is worrisome because of its association with neurological disorders in newborns. Co-infections with other arboviruses may impact adversely on the management of these diseases individually.

Project description:Most countries are reopening or considering lifting the stringent prevention policies such as lockdowns, consequently, daily coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases (confirmed, recovered and deaths) are increasing significantly. As of July 25th, there are 16.5 million global cumulative confirmed cases, 9.4 million cumulative recovered cases and 0.65 million deaths. There is a tremendous necessity of supervising and estimating future COVID-19 cases to control the spread and help countries prepare their healthcare systems. In this study, time-series models - Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) and Seasonal Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (SARIMA) are used to forecast the epidemiological trends of the COVID-19 pandemic for top-16 countries where 70%-80% of global cumulative cases are located. Initial combinations of the model parameters were selected using the auto-ARIMA model followed by finding the optimized model parameters based on the best fit between the predictions and test data. Analytical tools Auto-Correlation function (ACF), Partial Auto-Correlation Function (PACF), Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) were used to assess the reliability of the models. Evaluation metrics Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Mean Square Error (MSE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Mean Absolute Percent Error (MAPE) were used as criteria for selecting the best model. A case study was presented where the statistical methodology was discussed in detail for model selection and the procedure for forecasting the COVID-19 cases of the USA. Best model parameters of ARIMA and SARIMA for each country are selected manually and the optimized parameters are then used to forecast the COVID-19 cases. Forecasted trends for confirmed and recovered cases showed an exponential rise for countries such as the United States, Brazil, South Africa, Colombia, Bangladesh, India, Mexico and Pakistan. Similarly, trends for cumulative deaths showed an exponential rise for countries Brazil, South Africa, Chile, Colombia, Bangladesh, India, Mexico, Iran, Peru, and Russia. SARIMA model predictions are more realistic than that of the ARIMA model predictions confirming the existence of seasonality in COVID-19 data. The results of this study not only shed light on the future trends of the COVID-19 outbreak in top-16 countries but also guide these countries to prepare their health care policies for the ongoing pandemic. The data used in this work is obtained from publicly available John Hopkins University's COVID-19 database.

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Analysis and forecasting of confirmed, death, and recovered cases of COVID-19 infections in Nigeria: Implications for university administrators.

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