The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) and the African Risk Capacity (ARC) have launched two COVID-19 modelling tools for Africa. They are the COVID-19 Potential Outcomes Scenarios and COVID-19 Spread Simulation Tool for Africa.
The Centre says the tools will help African Union member states to evaluate the potential magnitude of COVID-19 in their countries.
They will also assist in making decisions on appropriate responses to mitigate risks due to the pandemic.
Unpacking both tools
In a statement released recently, the Centre says the COVID-19 Potential Outcomes Scenarios will help in modelling the potential impact of the outbreak using specific sets of scenarios and assumptions.
The COVID-19 Spread Simulation Tool for Africa will enable simulations of different scenarios of COVID-19 spread for each country.
Director-General of the African Risk Capacity and Assistant Secretary-General at the United Nations Mohamed Beavogui says African countries can use these tools to deal with spread of the pandemic.
“COVID-19 has generated unprecedented socioeconomic consequences with the reversal of hard-won development achievements. Africa is particularly challenged in its efforts to cope with the decease burdens. ARC is happy to present the new Africa COVID-19 decision support tool which governments and institutions can leverage in designing timely and more informed policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic’, says Beavogui.”
Modelling tools used to better manage COVID-19 response
Africa CDC says since the first case of COVID-19 in Africa was confirmed on 14 February 2020, the pandemic has spread to all AU member states.
It says the pandemic has had an increasing negative impact on the health and socioeconomic well-being of populations.
Experts says the continent needs a mechanism to better inform member states on the epidemiology of the disease and the impact of available non-pharmaceutical interventions so they can implement appropriate policies and programmes.
The tools have the capacity to use actual reported cases per time to generate the weekly cumulative number of infections, hospitalizations and deaths for each state over a period of three years; and the daily distribution of cases into disease stages at sub-national levels over a 300-day period.
“We at Africa CDC recognise that modelling is important in planning our response to the current and future pandemics. However, modelling is based on assumptions and the models will depend on the assumptions used to develop them,” said Dr John Nkengasong, Director of Africa CDC.
Following this launch, Africa CDC and ARC will work closely with states and partners to improve and promote the tools.
Key stakeholders will also be trained and trained so that the tools can be made more useful for tackling disease threats across the continent in the long-term.
