Predicting the Pandemic COVID-19 Using ARIMA Model

Abstract

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been recognized as a global threat, and several studies are being conducted using various mathematical models to predict the probable evolution of this epidemic. The main objective of this study is to apply AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model with the objective of monitoring and short-term forecasting the total confirmed new cases per day all over the world. The data are extracted from daily report of World Health Organization from 21st January 2020 to 16th March 2020. Akaike’s Information Criterion (AIC) and Ljung-Box test were used to evaluate the constructed models. To assess the validity of the proposed model, the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE) and Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) between the observed and fitted of COVID-19 total confirmed new cases was calculated. Finally, we applied “forecast” package in R software and the fitted ARIMA model to predict the infections of COVID-19. We found that the ARIMA (1, 2, 1) model was able to describe and predict the epidemiological trend of the disease of COVID-19. The MAPE and RMSE for the training set and validation set respectively, which we found was reasonable for use in the forecast. Furthermore, the model also provided forecast total confirmed new cases for the following days. ARIMA model applied to COVID-19 confirmed cases data are an important tool for COVID-19 surveillance all over the world. This study shows that accurate forecasting of the COVID-19 trend is possible using an ARIMA model. Unless strict infection management and control are taken, our findings indicate the potential of COVID-19 to cause greater outbreak all over the world.