Abstract:
Identification and isolation of COVID-19 infected persons plays a significant role in the
control of COVID-19 pandemic. A country’s COVID-19 positive testing rate is useful in
understanding andmonitoring the disease transmission and spread for the planning of
intervention policy. Using publicly available data collected between March 5th, 2020
andMay 31st, 2021, we proposed to estimate both the positive testing rate and its daily
rate of change in South Africa with a flexible semi-parametric smoothing model for
discrete data. There was a gradual increase in the positive testing rate up to a first peak
rate in July, 2020, then a decrease before another peak aroundmid-December 2020 to
mid-January 2021. The proposed semi-parametric smoothing model provides a data
driven estimates for both the positive testing rate and its change.We provide an online
R dashboard that can be used to estimate the positive rate in any country of interest
based on publicly available data. We believe this is a useful tool for both researchers
and policymakers for planning intervention and understanding the COVID-19 spread.
