Morocco’s COVID-19 Spread Slows as Reproduction Rate Nears 1

In a (unofficial) document on the epidemiological situation in Morocco for the period from March 2, the date on which the first case was identified in the kingdom, to April 12, the group of experts reviewed its reflections based on the R0, the basic reproduction rate. This is the average number of infections generated by a person during the period when they are infectious, whether or not they are symptomatic.

According to the document’s estimate, the R0 has been equal to 1.21 since April 9, 2020 in Morocco, compared to 2 in mid-March. For the group of experts, from March 27, "the speed of appearance of new cases has slowed down, which would be linked to the effect of the social distancing and containment measures introduced since mid-March".

With these new figures, the virus reproduction rate is therefore approaching 1 in Morocco; which means that the kingdom is moving towards controlling the epidemic. If the R0 remains above 1, a patient will infect more than one person, thus creating an epidemic situation. Conversely, if this rate is less than (or even equal to) 1, each case will give rise to less than one secondary case on average and the epidemic will eventually disappear.

It should be noted that this drop in R0 is caused by the drastic measures taken very early on by Morocco. In addition, the number of patients taken care of in intensive care / resuscitation is decreasing since April 9. This figure was 67 at the beginning of April. It then stabilized around April 5, with an average of 100 patients taken care of daily, and has been declining since April 10.

The group of experts therefore recommends strengthening confinement in cities with greater virus circulation, particularly in the Casablanca-Settat and Marrakech-Safi regions, as well as the supervised quarantine of contacts of confirmed cases, which amounted to 9,984 on April 12.