ArticleComputational and mathematical methods in medicine2020
Modelling the Potential Impact of Social Distancing on the COVID-19 Epidemic in South Africa.
Article in Computational and mathematical methods in medicine, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Effectiveness of social distancing measures and lockdowns for reducing transmission of COVID-19 in non-healthcare, community-based settings.Philosophical transactions. Series A, Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences · 2023Pooled it
- Infectious disease modelling for SARS-CoV-2 in Africa to guide policy: A systematic review.Epidemics · 2022Pooled it
- Trial
- Exploring affordable and effective pandemic containment measures in lower-income countries with a spatial SEIR model: a case study in South Africa.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Article
- COVID-19 transmission dynamics and the impact of vaccination: modelling, analysis and simulations.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Modelling COVID-19 pandemic control strategies in metropolitan and rural health districts in New South Wales, Australia.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Does pre-COVID impulsive behaviour predict adherence to hygiene and social distancing measures in youths following the COVID-19 pandemic onset? Evidence from a South African longitudinal study.BMC public health · 2023Article
- The effect of changing COVID-19 restrictions on the transmission rate in a veterinary clinic.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2023Article
- Article
- Epidemiological characteristics and transmission dynamics of the COVID-19 outbreak in Hohhot, China: a time-varying SQEIAHR model analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2023Article
- Modeling the impact of combined use of COVID Alert SA app and vaccination to curb COVID-19 infections in South Africa.PloS one · 2023Article
- Social distancing as a public-good dilemma for socio-economic cost: An evolutionary game approach.Heliyon · 2022Article
- Estimating the risk of SARS-CoV-2 deaths using a Markov switching-volatility model combined with heavy-tailed distributions for South Africa.BMC public health · 2022Article
- A vaccination model for COVID-19 in Gauteng, South Africa.Infectious Disease Modelling · 2022Article
- COVID-19 exit strategy during vaccine implementation: a balance between social distancing and herd immunity.Archives of virology · 2022Review
- Application of optimal control to the dynamics of COVID-19 disease in South Africa.Scientific African · 2022Article
- Assessing the potential impact of COVID-19 Omicron variant: Insight through a fractional piecewise model.Results in physics · 2022Article
- Mathematical modeling and impact analysis of the use of COVID Alert SA app.AIMS public health · 2022Article
- A mathematical model for SARS-CoV-2 in variable-order fractional derivative.The European physical journal. Special topics · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic continues to be a global health problem whose impact has been significantly felt in South Africa. With the global spread increasing and infecting millions, containment efforts by countries have largely focused on lockdowns and social distancing to minimise contact between persons. Social distancing has been touted as the best form of response in managing a rapid increase in the number of infected cases. In this paper, we present a deterministic model to describe the impact of social distancing on the transmission dynamics of COVID-19 in South Africa. The model is fitted to data from March 5 to April 13, 2020, on the cumulative number of infected cases, and a scenario analysis on different levels of social distancing is presented. The model shows that with the levels of social distancing under the initial lockdown level between March 26 and April 13, 2020, there would be a projected continued rise in the number of infected cases. The model also looks at the impact of relaxing the social distancing measures after the initial announcement of the lockdown. It is shown that relaxation of social distancing by 2% can result in a 23% rise in the number of cumulative cases whilst an increase in the level of social distancing by 2% would reduce the number of cumulative cases by about 18%. The model results accurately predicted the number of cases after the initial lockdown level was relaxed towards the end of April 2020. These results have implications on the management and policy direction in the early phase of the epidemic.
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