ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Infectious Diseases: Epidemiology and Prevention
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1649498
Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on number of deaths in Ghana: an application of ARIMA with intervention analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
- 2University of Professional Studies, Accra, Ghana
- 3University of Environment and Sustainable Development, Somanya, Ghana
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Over the past three years, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak has caused millions of unexpected deaths worldwide. Ghana, like many other countries, recorded numerous COVID-19 deaths. The number of deaths from the commencement of the crisis formed a time series. This study examines the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the number of deaths in Ghana using intervention analysis on time series data. Initially, we generated an ARIMA (3, 1, 0) model to examine monthly death data in Ghana from January 2018 to December 2022, identifying March 2020 as the critical intervention point. March 2020 marked the commencement of the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana. Secondly, we employed the ARIMA model to predict the post-pandemic death trend, and ultimately, we found no substantial discrepancy between the estimated and observed death count. Consequently, the analysis concluded that, despite a surge in global deaths, the estimated model indicated that the pandemic's emergence did not result in a significant change in the number of deaths in Ghana beyond the anticipated figures based on pre-pandemic patterns. Key Words: COVID-19, pandemic, time series, intervention analysis, death count
Keywords: COVID-19, pandemic, time series, Intervention analysis, death count
Received: 18 Jun 2025; Accepted: 14 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Nadarajah, Hesse, Kpeglo and Boyetey. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Saralees Nadarajah, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom
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