In early 2020, the trajectory of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic on the African continent was much discussed. Slow growth in mortality even prompted speculation that the continent might be “spared” as a result of an overall younger population, effective government responses (1), or perhaps even protection via cross-immunity from other coronaviruses. In 2021, it is increasingly clear that significant and disruptive morbidity and mortality have occurred in at least some settings, and novel variants are of increasing concern. However, it is also clear that understanding the trajectory of the pandemic on the continent requires recognizing vast variation in factors that could shape how bad the infection will be for people who are infected, but also how fast the virus will spread (2). Ssentongo et al. (3) tackle this question using statistical models to model case trajectories across the African continent (Fig. 1A), providing week-ahead forecasts of case numbers.

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在非洲建立有用的 SARS-CoV-2 模型 [医学科学]


2020 年初，严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒 2（SARS-CoV-2）在非洲大陆大流行的轨迹引起了广泛讨论。死亡率的缓慢增长甚至引发了人们的猜测，即由于人口总体年轻化、政府的有效应对措施（ 1 ），甚至可能通过对其他冠状病毒的交叉免疫提供保护，非洲大陆可能会“幸免于难”。到 2021 年，越来越明显的是，至少在某些环境中发生了重大且具有破坏性的发病率和死亡率，新的变异引起了越来越多的关注。然而，同样清楚的是，要了解非洲大陆大流行的轨迹，需要认识到各种因素的巨大差异，这些因素可能会影响感染对感染者的严重程度，以及病毒传播的速度( 2 )。森通戈等人。 ( 3 ) 使用统计模型来解决这个问题，对整个非洲大陆的病例轨迹进行建模（图 1 A ），提供未来一周的病例数预测。