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Africa has been known to experience series of problems among which are poverty, food insecurity, lack of access to energy, lack of infrastructure among others. These problems were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has had a severe impact on the socioeconomic status of households in Africa. This paper examines the relationship between socioeconomic shocks, social protection, and household food security during the pandemic in Nigeria, the Africa's largest economy. Using the World Bank's COVID-19 national longitudinal baseline phone survey (2020) for the analysis and applied the multinomial logit regression, the study finds that socioeconomic shocks resulting from the pandemic have led to an increased level of food insecurity. Social protection programmes have played a crucial role in mitigating the impact of these shocks on households. However, the study also highlights the need for more targeted and effective social protection policies to ensure that vulnerable households are adequately protected from the adverse effects of the pandemic. The findings of this study have important implications for policymakers and stakeholders in Africa's largest economy, as they seek to address the challenges posed by the pandemic and promote household food security for the actualisation the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of food and nutrition security (SDG2). The study, therefore, recommends that efforts be made to preserve food supply chains by mitigating the pandemic's effect on food systems, increasing food production, and looking forward beyond the pandemic by building resilient food systems with the use of social protection interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pandemic of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) took the world by surprise. Following the first outbreak of COVID-19 in December 2019, several models have been developed to study and understand its transmission dynamics. Although the spread of COVID-19 is being slowed down by vaccination and other interventions, there is still a need to have a clear understanding of the evolution of the pandemic across countries, states and communities. To this end, there is a need to have a clearer picture of the initial spread of the disease in different regions. In this project, we used a simple SEIR model and a Bayesian inference framework to estimate the basic reproduction number of COVID-19 across Africa. Our estimates vary between 1.98 (Sudan) and 9.66 (Mauritius), with a median of 3.67 (90% CrI: 3.31–4.12). The estimates provided in this paper will help to inform COVID-19 modeling in the respective countries/regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The public health response to the global COVID-19 pandemic has varied widely by region. In Africa, uptake of effective COVID-19 vaccines has been limited by accessibility and vaccine hesitancy. The aim of this study was to compare perceptions of COVID-19 infection and vaccination between pregnant women and non-pregnant adults in four regions of Cameroon, located in Central Africa. Methods: A cross-sectional survey study was conducted at urban and suburban hospital facilities in Cameroon. Participants were randomly selected from a convenience sample of adult pregnant and non-pregnant adults in outpatient clinical settings between June 1st and July 14th, 2021. A confidential survey was administered in person by trained research nurses after obtaining written informed consent. Participants were asked about self-reported sociodemographics, medical comorbidities, perceptions of COVID-19 infection, and vaccination. Descriptive statistics were used for survey responses and univariate and multivariable logistic regression models were created to explore factors associated with COVID-19 vaccine acceptability. Results: Fewer than one-third of participants were interested in receiving the COVID-19 vaccine (31%, 257/835) and rates did not differ by pregnancy status. Overall, 43% of participants doubted vaccine efficacy, and 85% stated that the vaccine available in Africa was less effective than vaccine available in Europe. Factors independently associated with vaccine acceptability included having children (aOR = 1.5; p = 0.04) and higher education (aOR = 1.6 for secondary school vs primary/none; p = 0.03). Perceived risks of vaccination ranged from death (33%) to fetal harm (31%) to genetic changes (1%). Health care professionals were cited as the most trusted source for health information (82%, n = 681). Conclusion: COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and misinformation in Cameroon was highly prevalent among pregnant and non-pregnant adults in 2021 while vaccine was available but not recommended for use in pregnancy. Based on study findings, consistent public health messaging from medical professionals about vaccine safety and efficacy and local production of vaccine are likely to improve acceptability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused over 500 million cases and over six million deaths globally. From these numbers, over 12 million cases and over 250 thousand deaths have occurred on the African continent as of May 2022. Prevention and surveillance remains the cornerstone of interventions to halt the further spread of COVID-19. Google Health Trends (GHT), a free Internet tool, may be valuable to help anticipate outbreaks, identify disease hotspots, or understand the patterns of disease surveillance. We collected COVID-19 case and death incidence for 54 African countries and obtained averages for four, five-month study periods in 2020–2021. Average case and death incidences were calculated during these four time periods to measure disease severity. We used GHT to characterize COVID-19 incidence across Africa, collecting numbers of searches from GHT related to COVID-19 using four terms: 'coronavirus', 'coronavirus symptoms', 'COVID19', and 'pandemic'. The terms were related to weekly COVID-19 case incidences for the entire study period via multiple linear and weighted linear regression analyses. We also assembled 72 variables assessing Internet accessibility, demographics, economics, health, and others, for each country, to summarize potential mechanisms linking GHT searches and COVID-19 incidence. COVID-19 burden in Africa increased steadily during the study period. Important increases for COVID-19 death incidence were observed for Seychelles and Tunisia. Our study demonstrated a weak correlation between GHT and COVID-19 incidence for most African countries. Several variables seemed useful in explaining the pattern of GHT statistics and their relationship to COVID-19 including: log of average weekly cases, log of cumulative total deaths, and log of fixed total number of broadband subscriptions in a country. Apparently, GHT may best be used for surveillance of diseases that are diagnosed more consistently. Overall, GHT-based surveillance showed little applicability in the studied countries. GHT for an ongoing epidemic might be useful in specific situations, such as when countries have significant levels of infection with low variability. Future studies might assess the algorithm in different epidemic contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Child growth in populations is commonly characterised by cross-sectional surveys. These require data collection from large samples of individuals across age ranges spanning 1–20 years. Such surveys are expensive and impossible in restrictive situations, such as, e.g. the COVID pandemic or limited size of isolated communities. A method allowing description of child growth based on small samples is needed. Methods: Small samples of data (N~50) for boys and girls 6–20 years old from different socio-economic situations in Africa and Europe were randomly extracted from surveys of thousands of children. Data included arm circumference, hip width, grip strength, height and weight. Polynomial regressions of these measurements on age were explored. Findings: Polynomial curves based on small samples correlated well (r = 0.97 to 1.00) with results of surveys of thousands of children from same communities and correctly reflected sexual dimorphism and socio-economic differences. Conclusions: Fitting of curvilinear regressions to small data samples allows expeditious assessment of child growth in a number of characteristics when situations change rapidly, resources are limited and access to children is restricted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The aim of the study was to visualize the global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic over the first 90 days, through the principal component analysis approach of dimensionality reduction. Methods: This study used data from the Global COVID-19 Index provided by PEMANDU Associates. The sample, representing 161 countries, comprised the number of confirmed cases, deaths, stringency indices, population density and GNI per capita (USD). Correlation matrices were computed to reveal the association between the variables at three time points: day-30, day-60 and day-90. Three separate principal component analyses were computed for similar time points, and several standardized plots were produced. Results: Confirmed cases and deaths due to COVID-19 showed positive but weak correlation with stringency and GNI per capita. Through principal component analysis, the first two principal components captured close to 70% of the variance of the data. The first component can be viewed as the severity of the COVID-19 surge in countries, whereas the second component largely corresponded to population density, followed by GNI per capita of countries. Multivariate visualization of the two dominating principal components provided a standardized comparison of the situation in the161 countries, performed on day-30, day-60 and day-90 since the first confirmed cases in countries worldwide. Conclusion: Visualization of the global spread of COVID-19 showed the unequal severity of the pandemic across continents and over time. Distinct patterns in clusters of countries, which separated many European countries from those in Africa, suggested a contrast in terms of stringency measures and wealth of a country. The African continent appeared to fare better in terms of the COVID-19 pandemic and the burden of mortality in the first 90 days. A noticeable worsening trend was observed in several countries in the same relative time frame of the disease's first 90 days, especially in the United States of America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has impacted and changed lives on a global scale since its emergence and spread from China in late 2019. It has caused millions of infections, and thousands of deaths worldwide. However, the control of this pandemic still remains unachievable in many African countries including Egypt and Nigeria, despite the application of some strict preventive and control measures. Therefore, this study assessed the knowledge, attitude, and perceptions of Egyptians and Nigerians towards the COVID-19 pandemic. This study was designed as a cross-sectional community-based questionnaire survey in both countries. Participants' demography, knowledge, attitude, and perceptions towards the COVID-19 outbreak were obtained using a convenience sampling technique. Data collected were subjected to descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis. A total of 1437 respondents were included in this preliminary report. The mean knowledge score was 14.7±2.3. The majority of the respondents (61.6%) had a satisfactory knowledge of the disease. Age (18–39 years), education (College/bachelors), and background of respondents were factors influencing knowledge levels. The attitude of most respondents (68.9%) towards instituted preventive measures was satisfactory with an average attitude score of 6.9 ± 1.2. The majority of the respondents (96%) practiced self-isolation and social-distancing but only 36% follow all health recommendations. The perception of most respondents (62.1%) on the global efforts at controlling the virus and preventing further spread was satisfactory with an average score of 10.9 ± 2.7. Only 22% of the respondents were satisfied with their country's handling of the pandemic. An apprehensive understanding of the current status in Africa through studies like KAP is crucial to avoid Africa being the next epicenter of the pandemic. For the populace to follow standard infection prevention and control measures adequately, governments need to gain the trust of citizens by strengthening the health systems and improving surveillance activities in detecting cases, to offer the optimum health services to their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]