Countries bordering the Republic of South Africa
A possibility explored was just selecting hosts in the 6 countries bordering and including South Africa (TLDs BW, LS, SZ, we cover ZA, ZW under E Africa) and then just using hosts with TLDs .co, .com, .go, .gov or including banc or bank in the name. The ideas was that such hosts are probably on commodity networks. However as of May 5th, 2020 these countries have few Covid-19 cases (BW:23, LS: 0, NA 101, SZ (Eswatine): 145, ZA: 218,329, ZW:34). As expected we could not identify a significant impact of Covid-19 on IPDV just by looking at the countries as a whole.
Botswana
PingER monitors five hosts in Botswana. They are: www.bac.ac.bw the Botswana Accountancy College in the capital Gaborone which contains about 10% of Botswana's 2.3 million population, www.biust.ac.bw the Botswana University of Science and Technology in Gaborone, www.bankofbotswana.bw the Bank of Botswana in Gaborone, ns1.btc.bw the Botswana Telecommunications Corporation in Gaborone, and www.bec.co.bw the Botswana Examinations Council in Gaborone. www.bankofbotswana.bw stopped responding on Mar 16.
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- The IPDV for ns1.btc.bw on around Apr 3 appears to drop by a factor of 5 to 10 compared to the previous 2 weeks. Around May 8 it starts to recover. This matches the lockdown mentioned above.
- www.bac.ac.bw has quite a change in the IPDV curve. Up until the end of March there are big differences in weekday and weekend IPDV measurements. Following Apr 3
the peaks and valleys are much less pronounced, also averageIPDV the average IPDV is lower. - There is no apparent impact of the lockdown on the IPD for www.biust.ac.bw.
- The Bank of Botswana (www.bankofbotswana.bw) stopped responding starting Mar 16 and thus provides no input to the interventions starting in April.
- www.bec.co.bw responses between the second week of March and Apr 18 are intermittent and thus do not enable any clear correlation with the interventions.
If we make a running average of the IPDV over 14 days then the effect of the intervention on Mar 31 on www is clearer (note the reductions in the 14-day average and the standard deviation, see below. For ns1.btc.bw there is again a big dip in both the 14-day average and standard deviation around Apr 2. It should be noted that there was a similar riase around Mar 10.
Lesotho
PingER monitors four hosts in Lesotho. They are: www.bos.gov.ls the Bureau of Statistics in the capital Maseru, www.lce.ac.ls the Lesotho College of Education in Maseru, www.leo.co.ls the Leo Internet Service Provider in Maseru, and www.chal.org.ls the Christian Health Association in Maseru.
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- The week after Mar 18 the IPDV for www.lce.ac.ls starts to drop and by the end of March through the first week in May has dropped by a factor of 2 and no lonnger longer exhibits the weekday vs weekend differences
- For the other three hosts there does appear to be increase peaks in IPDV for most of March followed by a factor of 2 reduction for April onwards. Whether this related to Covid-19 we cannot tell.
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Looking at the charts below there does appear to be a correlation in the reduction of IPDV during the lockdown. This does not appear to be evident for the other hosts. If there is anything there appears to be an increase compared to the previous 4 weeks
Useful other documents
Coronavirus-free Lesotho relaxes lockdown restrictions, 5/6/2020
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