Abstract
COVID-19 is imposing massive health, social and economic costs. While many developed countries have started vaccinating, most African nations are waiting for vaccine stocks to be allocated, and are using clinical public health (CPH) strategies to control the pandemic. The emergence of Variants of Concern (VOC), unequal access to the vaccine supply and locally specific logistical and vaccine delivery parameters, add complexity to national CPH strategies and amplify the urgent need for effective CPH policies. Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning techniques and collaborations can be instrumental in an accurate, timely, locally nuanced analysis of multiple data sources to inform CPH decision-making, vaccination strategies and their staged roll-out. The Africa-Canada Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC) has been established to develop and employ machine learning techniques to design CPH strategies in Africa, which requires ongoing collaboration, testing and development to maximize the equity and effectiveness of COVID-19 related CPH interventions.
Highlights
Disaster & Emergency Management, School of Administrative Studies and Advanced Disaster, Emergency and Rapid-Response Simulation (ADERSIM), York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada; School of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, University of the Witwatersrand, Head of Policy at Gauteng Office of the Premier, Johannesburg 2107, South Africa; Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research, York University, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada; Equal contribution as first authors
Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC) has been leveraging big data and AI-based techniques to respond to these policy questions in nine African countries
We are building on the experience we have gained from South Africa, where ACADIC has designed and is piloting Artificial Intelligencebased techniques to model prioritization strategies in the COVID-19 vaccine roll-out in the Gauteng Province, the most populous of the nine provinces in South Africa
Summary
Deploying and administering effective and safe vaccines against COVID-19 to large populations at a fast pace is, a nontrivial task, given the factors above, the high transmissibility of the virus and its speed of spread, the variable feasibility of public health mitigation and prevention strategies, the infrastructure and logistics requirements, including cold chain, supply, distribution and delivery related issues, real-time monitoring and determination of vaccine efficacy, and vaccine production, as well as vaccine hesitancy, which is high in the African continent [11,12]. Due to the logistical challenges in Africa, an assessment of different vaccination scenarios and roll-out strategies, that take into account national and local realities, is of paramount importance for public health policy and decision making, in order to maximize and track staged progress towards the achievement of herd immunity. Artificial Intelligence and Data Innovation Consortium (ACADIC) has been leveraging big data and AI-based techniques to respond to these policy questions in nine African countries
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