Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: Oct 3, 2023
Date Accepted: Mar 20, 2024
Date Submitted to PubMed: Apr 3, 2024
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Middle East and North Africa Surveillance Metrics and History of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Updated Epidemiological Assessment
ABSTRACT
Background:
This study updates the COVID-19 pandemic surveillance in the Middle East and North Africa we first conducted in 2020 with two additional years of data for the region.
Objective:
In addition to updates of traditional surveillance data and dynamic panel estimates from the original study Post et al. (2021), this study used data on sequenced SARS-CoV-2 variants from the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) to identify the appearance and duration of variants of concern. We used Nextclade nomenclature to collect clade designations from sequences and Pangolin nomenclature for lineage designations of SARS-CoV-2. Finally, we conducted a one-sided t-test for whether regional weekly speed was greater than an outbreak threshold of ten. We ran the test iteratively with six months of data from September 4, 2020, to May 12, 2023
Methods:
In addition to updates of traditional surveillance data and dynamic panel estimates from the original study Post et al. (2021), this study used data on sequenced SARS-CoV-2 variants from the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) to identify the appearance and duration of variants of concern. We used Nextclade nomenclature to collect clade designations from sequences and Pangolin nomenclature for lineage designations of SARS-CoV-2. Finally, we conducted a one-sided t-test for whether regional weekly speed was greater than an outbreak threshold of ten. We ran the test iteratively with six months of data from September 4, 2020, to May 12, 2023
Results:
While COVID-19 continues to circulate in the Middle East and North Africa, the rate of transmission remained well below the threshold of an outbreak for over one year ahead of the WHO declaration. COVID-19 is endemic in the region and no longer reaches the threshold of the pandemic definition. Both standard and enhanced surveillance metrics confirm that the pandemic had ended by the time of the WHO declaration.
Conclusions:
While COVID-19 continues to circulate in the Middle East and North Africa, the rate of transmission remained well below the threshold of an outbreak for over one year ahead of the WHO declaration. COVID-19 is endemic in the region and no longer reaches the threshold of the pandemic definition. Both standard and enhanced surveillance metrics confirm that the pandemic had ended by the time of the WHO declaration.
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Copyright
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