Leveraging Serosurveillance and Postmortem Surveillance to Quantify the Impact of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Africa.

Background: The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has had a devastating impact on global health, the magnitude of which appears to differ intercontinentally: For example, reports suggest that 271 900 per million people have been infected in Europe versus 8800 per million people in Africa. While Africa is the second-largest continent by population, its reported COVID-19 cases comprise <3% of global cases. Although social and environmental explanations have been proposed to clarify this discrepancy, systematic underascertainment of infections may be equally responsible.

Methods for early characterisation of the severity and dynamics of SARS-CoV-2 variants: a population-based time series analysis in South Africa.

Background: Assessment of disease severity associated with a novel pathogen or variant provides crucial information needed by public health agencies and governments to develop appropriate responses. The SARS-CoV-2 omicron variant of concern (VOC) spread rapidly through populations worldwide before robust epidemiological and laboratory data were available to investigate its relative severity. Here we develop a set of methods that make use of non-linked, aggregate data to promptly estimate the severity of a novel variant, compare its characteristics with those of previous VOCs, and inform data-driven public health responses.