The novel Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was first

discovered in Wuhan, China in December 2019 . The associated disease, COVID-19 was
declared as a pandemic by the World Health Organisation (WHO) on March 11, 2020. By
November 14, 2020 over 53.5 million confirmed cases and 1.3 million deaths had been
reported across the world. In Africa, the burden and impacts of the pandemic are less
compared with Europe and the USA. This may be attributed to the later arrival of the
pandemic, low seeding rate, youthful demographics and possible prior immunity to
coronavirus-like infections. Nevertheless, the pandemic is accelerating in Africa and passed
2.0 million confirmed cases on November 13, 2020 according to the situation report. In
Ethiopia, the first imported COVID-19 case was detected on March 13, 2020 by the Ministry
of Health in a Japanese traveller from Burkina Faso.

To control the spread of the disease, the Ethiopian government took immediate action, by
closing schools, and banning sporting events and mass gatherings. It took 79 days to reach
the first 1000 cases, but 10,000, 20,000, 40,000 and 80,000 cases were attained in shorter
periods of 51, 16, 18 and 44 days respectively. By the middle of November, 2020 the cases
had surpassed 100,000.

As the pandemic accelerates globally, many African countries, including Ethiopia, have been
implementing different non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) to contain the spread of the
disease. The WHO is leading a global COVAX initiative for accelerated development of
promising vaccine candidates that may be available in early 2021, and experimental therapies
are also undergoing clinical trials for safety before licensing. Currently,the most effective
means to control the spread of COVID-19 remains the implementation of different NPIs to
break chains of transmission. The transmission pathways of COVID-19 from person to
person are: i) close contact through respiratory droplets, ii) direct contact with infected
persons, and iii) contact with contaminated fomites (objects and surfaces) . Public health
measures are intended to diminish these transmission mechanisms.

Mathematical models have been previously used with greater success in understanding the
transmission dynamics and control mechanisms of infectious diseases. To understand the
early transmission dynamics of COVID-19 under different scenarios, a number of
mathematical models have been previously proposed. These established epidemiological and
mathematical models provide important insights for public health decision-makers to enforce
different mitigation strategies in different countries. As COVID-19 continues to spread
worldwide, most public health authorities are utilizing mathematical models for decision
making on intervention guidelines. Many countries (for example the UK, China, Germany,
USA, Morocco) revised their public health measures based on COVID-19 model predictions.
We believe that, due to the differences in social interaction and life style of the urban and
rural populations in Ethiopia, mathematical models developed in other countries may be
inapplicable in unraveling the dynamics of disease in lower income settings. This study
employs the use of mathematical models to simulate the spread and interruption of
transmission of COVID-19 in Ethiopia.

[Bedilu Alamirie Ejigu, Manalebish Debalike Asfaw, Lisa Cavalerie, Tilahun Abebaw, Mark Nanying,
Matthew Baylis  Published: November 16, 2021

 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0259874]
The emergence and re-emergence of several global infectious diseases including the current global
epidemic of COVID-19, have led to the overwhelming practice of mathematical modelling which
requires the collaboration of scientists in the field of mathematical sciences and public health.
Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic led to the extensive use of mathematical models to study
disease transmission dynamics and to evaluate the number needed to treat or vaccinate to prevent
epidemics

[Global research activity on mathematical modeling of transmission and control of 23

selected infectious disease outbreak Waleed M. Sweileh  Globalization and Health

volume 18, Article number: 4 (2022) Cite this article ]

 Infectious diseases are the result of a disharmonious ecological interaction between a
microbial infectious agent (bacteria, fungi, parasites, or viruses, except for prions that
are infectious proteins) and a host, where the dynamics in this interaction is subjected
to the modulatory influence of several factors, such as the environment, the biological
properties of the pathogens and the host susceptibilities to disease, as well as the
influence of behavioral, cultural, and social patterns that can enhance or mitigate the
host's exposure to the disease sources and consequently its transmission in the
population
 [Costa ALP, Neto OAR, Silva-Junior ACS (2019) conditioners of the infectious
disease dynamic. Estacao cientifica (UNIFAP) 8:09
 A mathematical model is an abstract representation of a phenomenon constructed with
the use of equations that generate perspectives of the general behavior of an epidemic
event, also representing a way to investigate the influence of determinate factors over
disease spread, providing a crude general behavior of an epidemic as addressed by
epidemic curves, thus allowing predictions about the endurance of an epidemic, its
magnitude in the population, and the evaluation of factors that influence the
transmission dynamics, and consequently the number of cases. Highlighting it is
possible to apply mathematical refinements to the models to enhance their proximity
to real data
 The infectious agents are in a constant process of biological evolution, as well as the
environment and human conceptions, culture, and behavior, implying a constant
transformation in the epidemiological profile of infectious diseases, in which the
mathematical modeling can provide support to the decision-making processes
concerning epidemiology and public health.

[Anderson Luiz Pena da Costa1*, Marcelo Amanajas Pires2, Rafael Lima Resque3 and Sheylla Susan
Moreira da Silva de Almeida3, (2021) Mathematical Modeling of the Infectious Diseases:

How do mathematicians model infectious disease outbreaks?

In a deterministic model, individuals in the population are assigned to different subgroups or

compartments, each representing a specific stage of the epidemic. The transition rates from one
class to another are mathematically expressed as derivatives, hence the model is formulated using
differential equations.
https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Mathematical_modelling.

What is mathematical modeling epidemiology?

The mathematical model provides a precise description of the movements in and out of
the three compartments. Those movements are birth (flow into the compartment of
susceptible individuals), death (flow out of all compartments), transmission of infection (flow
from S into I), and recovery

[Guest Editor (s): Alexander Krämer,1 Mirjam Kretzschmar,2 and Klaus Krickeberg3
ID1
Fak. Gesundheitswissenschaften, Universität Bielefeld, Universitätsstr. 25, Bielefeld,
33615 Germany
ID2
University Medical Center Utrecht, Heidelberglaan 100, Utrecht, 3584 CX Netherlands

Many of the above ideas can be formalized mathematically in the so-called SIR model that describes
the dynamics of different states of individuals in the population in terms of a system of ordinary
differential equations. The variables of the system are given by the compartments described above:
the group of susceptible persons (denoted by S), the group of infected persons (denoted by I), and
the group of removed persons (removed from the process of transmission by immunity) (denoted by
R). The mathematical model provides a precise description of the movements in and out of the three
compartments. Those movements are birth (flow into the compartment of susceptible individuals),
death (flow out of all compartments), transmission of infection (flow from S into I), and recovery
(flow from I into R) (Fig. 1).

Flow chart of the SIR model

[Julius Centre for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Centre Utrecht,
Utrecht, The Netherlands
2
Center for Infectious Disease Control, RIVM, Bilthoven, The Netherlands
Mirjam Kretzschmar,2010 Nature public health emergency collection

The modeling of infectious diseases is a tool that has been used to study the mechanisms by
which diseases spread, to predict the future course of an outbreak and to evaluate strategies to
control an epidemic.[1]
The first scientist who systematically tried to quantify causes of death was John Graunt in his
book Natural and Political Observations made upon the Bills of Mortality, in 1662. The bills he
studied were listings of numbers and causes of deaths published weekly. Graunt's analysis of
causes of death is considered the beginning of the "theory of competing risks" which according to
Daley and Gani [1] is "a theory that is now well established among modern epidemiologists".
The earliest account of mathematical modelling of spread of disease was carried out in 1760
by Daniel Bernoulli. Trained as a physician, Bernoulli created a mathematical model to defend
the practice of inoculating against smallpox.[2] The calculations from this model showed that
universal inoculation against smallpox would increase the life expectancy from 26 years 7
months to 29 years 9 months.[3] Daniel Bernoulli's work preceded the modern understanding
of germ theory.[citation needed]
In the early 20th century, William Hamer[4] and Ronald Ross[5] applied the law of mass action to
explain epidemic behaviour.
The 1920s saw the emergence of compartmental models. The Kermack–McKendrick epidemic
model (1927) and the Reed–Frost epidemic model (1928) both describe the relationship
between susceptible, infected and immune individuals in a population. The Kermack–McKendrick
epidemic model was successful in predicting the behavior of outbreaks very similar to that
observed in many recorded epidemics.[6]
Recently, agent-based models (ABMs) have been used in exchange for simpler compartmental
models.[7] For example, epidemiological ABMs have been used to inform public health
(nonpharmaceutical) interventions against the spread of SARS-CoV-2.[8] Epidemiological ABMs,
in spite of their complexity and requiring high computational power, have been criticized for
simplifying and unrealistic assumptions.[9][10] Still, they can be useful in informing decisions
regarding mitigation and suppression measures in cases when ABMs are accurately calibrated. [11]

One commonly used model is the SIR model19 for human-to-human transmission,

which describes the flow of individuals through three mutually exclusive stages of
infection: susceptible, infected and recovered. More complex models can
accurately portray the dynamic spread of specific epidemics.
For the COVID-19 pandemic, several models have been developed. Lin and
colleagues extended a SEIR (susceptible, exposed, infectious, removed) model
considering risk perception and the cumulative number of cases 20,
Anastassopoulou and colleagues proposed a discrete-time SIR model including
dead individuals21, Casella developed a control-oriented SIR model that stresses
the effects of delays and compares the outcomes of different containment
policies22 and Wu and colleagues used transmission dynamics to estimate the
clinical severity of COVID-1923. Stochastic transmission models have also been
considered24,25. Here, we propose a new mean-field epidemiological model for
the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy that extends the classical SIR model, similar to that
developed by Gumel and colleagues for SARS26. A summary of the main findings,
limitations and implications of the model for policymakers 
Our model, named SIDARTHE, discriminates between detected and undetected
cases of infection and between different severity of illness (SOI), non-life-
threatening cases (asymptomatic and pauci-symptomatic; minor and moderate
infection) and potentially life-threatening cases (major and extreme) that require
ICU admission.