COVID-19 outbreak: Application of multi-gene genetic programming to country-based prediction models

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-COV-2) is a novel coronavirus that has infected more than 2,900,000 individuals worldwide. The widespread of coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) brings about the need for a prediction model to adopt appropriate evidence-based strategies. In this study, multi-gene genetic programming (MGGP), as one of the artificial intelligence models, has been proposed for the first time for predicting the COVID-19 outbreak. Although this is a challenging task due to significant fluctuations of daily confirmed cases, the results achieved by MGGP are promising. To be more specific, the predicted confirmed cases are acceptably close to the observed values for seven countries considered in this study. Thus, MGGP is suggested for developing estimation models of COVID-19. Furthermore, similarities and differences between the proposed prediction models are presented. Finally, it is discussed why a country-based prediction model is recommended.