Coral Gables, March 24, 2020 – SL FINANCIAL is an actuarial consulting and advisory firm based in Miami, Florida. We offer complete actuarial solutions in both traditional (re)insurance and alternative risk financing industries.

The following is inspired from an article published on Medium.com on March 19, 2020 entitled “Coronavirus: The Hammer and the Dance”:

The article focus is to show how strong coronavirus measures (i.e. “The Hammer”), that are temporary, are necessary for leaders to buy time (until a treatment at least is developed) and avoid the collapse of the healthcare system due to big peak of infection. Key takeaway of the article is that:

• • • Healthcare systems are already collapsing
    • Countries can either fight hard now or accept to suffer a massive epidemic
    • Choosing the epidemic will generate thousands or millions of deaths with possible further waves of infections
    • Choosing the fight will likely curb the deaths while learn and prepare for future outbreaks
    • All this will achieve something critical i.e. Buy Us Time

This post will focus on assessing the current situation using an epidemic calculator developed by Gabriel Goh, to country in sub Saharan Africa (case study of Cameroon). The calculator implements a classical infectious disease model – SEIR (Susceptible Exposed Infected Removed). The assessment in this post along with the reader should be mindful of the following conditions and limitations:

• Data Quality and Methodology. We relied on the calculator developed by Mr. Goh and have adjusted the parameters to reflect contextual differences between Cameroon and the United States. Model parameters for the United States or China were used without verification or audit, other than checks for reasonableness.
• Variability. Estimates are subject to material uncertainty from many different sources including (but not limited to) the random nature of claims experience, historical experience not being perfectly correlated to future experience, impacts of legal interpretations and judicial decisions, catastrophic events, legislation, regulation and business operations.

Central scenario assessment for country Cameroon suggests that the total number of deaths could reach over 430,000 (i.e. over 1.7% of the population):

Chart 1: Exposed, Infected, Hospitalized and Deaths in Cameroon COVID-19 Central Scenario

Chart 2: Infected, Hospitalized and Deaths in Cameroon COVID-19 Central Scenario

Source: SL FINANCIAL Analysis, Epidemic Calculator, Gabriel Goh, http://gabgoh.github.io/COVID/index.html

Finally, the following table presents a comparative assessment of the SEIR model’s parameters using Gabriel Goh’s estimate for the United State:

(*) 180 = 20 (international flights per week) x 2 (2-week period leading to 3/17/20) x 150 (passengers per flight) x 1% (percentage of infected) x 3 (basic reproduction number)

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