The world at large has been confronted with several disease outbreak which has posed and still posing a serious menace to public health globally. Recently, COVID-19 a new kind of coronavirus emerge from Wuhan city in China and was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. There has been a reported case of about 8622985 with global death of 457,355 as of 15.05 GMT, June 19, 2020. South-Africa, Egypt, Nigeria and Ghana are the most affected African countries with this outbreak. Thus, there is a need to monitor and predict COVID-19 prevalence in this region for effective control and management. Different statistical tools and time series model such as the linear regression model and autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models have been applied for disease prevalence/incidence prediction in different diseases outbreak. However, in this study, we adopted the ARIMA model to forecast the trend of COVID-19 prevalence in the aforementioned African countries. The datasets examined in this analysis spanned from February 21, 2020, to June 16, 2020, and was extracted from the World Health Organization website. ARIMA models with minimum Akaike information criterion correction (AICc) and statistically significant parameters were selected as the best models. Accordingly, the ARIMA (0,2,3), ARIMA (0,1,1), ARIMA (3,1,0) and ARIMA (0,1,2) models were chosen as the best models for SA, Nigeria, and Ghana and Egypt, respectively. Forecasting was made based on the best models. It is noteworthy to claim that the ARIMA models are appropriate for predicting the prevalence of COVID-19. We noticed a form of exponential growth in the trend of this virus in Africa in the days to come. Thus, the government and health authorities should pay attention to the pattern of COVID-19 in Africa. Necessary plans and precautions should be put in place to curb this pandemic in Africa.

Background: Multicollinearity greatly affects the Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) efficiency in both the linear regression model and the generalized linear model. Alternative estimators to the MLE include the ridge estimator, the Liu estimator and the Kibria-Lukman (KL) estimator, though literature shows that the KL estimator is preferred. Therefore, this study sought to modify the KL estimator to mitigate the Poisson Regression Model with multicollinearity. Methods: A simulation study and a real-life study was carried out and the performance of the new estimator was compared with some of the existing estimators. Results: The simulation result showed the new estimator performed more efficiently than the MLE, Poisson Ridge Regression Estimator (PRE), Poisson Liu Estimator (PLE) and the Poisson KL (PKL) estimators. The real-life application also agreed with the simulation result. Conclusions: In general, the new estimator performed more efficiently than the MLE, PRE, PLE and the PKL when multicollinearity was present.

Despite the intervention of WHO on vaccination for reducing the spread of Hepatitis B Virus (HBV), there are records of the high prevalence of HBV in some regions. In this paper, a mathematical model was formulated to analyze the acquisition and transmission process of the virus with the view of identifying the possible way of reducing the menace and mitigating the risk of the virus. The models' positivity and boundedness were demonstrated using well-known theorems. Equating the differential equations to zero demonstrates the equilibria of the solutions i.e., the disease-free and endemic equilibrium. The next Generation Matrix method was used to compute the basic reproduction number for the models. Local and global stabilities of the models were shown via linearization and Lyapunov function methods respectively. The importance of testing and treatment on the dynamics of HBV were fully discussed in this paper. It was discovered that testing at the acute stage of the virus and chronic unaware state helps in better management of the virus.

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Background: Multicollinearity greatly affects the Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) efficiency in both the linear regression model and the generalized linear model. Alternative estimators to the MLE include the ridge estimator, the Liu estimator and the Kibria-Lukman (KL) estimator, though literature shows that the KL estimator is preferred. Therefore, this study sought to modify the KL estimator to mitigate the Poisson Regression Model with multicollinearity. Methods: A simulation study and a real-life study were carried out and the performance of the new estimator was compared with some of the existing estimators. Results: The simulation result showed the new estimator performed more efficiently than the MLE, Poisson Ridge Regression Estimator (PRE), Poisson Liu Estimator (PLE) and the Poisson KL (PKL) estimators. The real-life application also agreed with the simulation result. Conclusions: In general, the new estimator performed more efficiently than the MLE, PRE, PLE and the PKL when multicollinearity was present.