Forecasting the long-term trend of COVID-19 epidemic using a dynamic model
Background The current outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has recently been declared as a pandemic and spread over 200 countries and territories. Forecasting the long-term trend of the COVID-19 epidemic can help health authorities determine the transmission characteristics of the virus and take appropriate prevention and control strategies beforehand. Previous studies that applied the traditional epidemic models or machine learning models were subject to underfitting or overfitting problems.
Methods We propose a new model named Dynamic-Susceptible-Exposed-Infective-Quarantined (D-SEIQ), by making appropriate modifications of the Susceptible-Exposed-Infective-Recovered (SEIR) model and integrating machine learning based parameter optimization under epidemiological rational constraints. We used the model to predict the long-term reported cumulative numbers of COVID-19 cases in China from 27 January, 2020.
Results We evaluated our model on officially reported confirmed cases from three different regions in China, and the results proved the effectiveness of our model in terms of simulating and predicting the trend of COVID-19 outbreak. In China-Excluding-Hubei area within 7 days after the first public report, our model successfully and accurately predicted the 40 days long trend and the exact date of turning point. The predicted cumulative number (12,506) by 10, March 2020 was only 3·8% different with the actual number (13,005). The parameters obtained by our model proved the effectiveness of prevention and intervention strategies on epidemic control in China.
Conclusions The integrated approach of epidemic and machine learning models could accurately forecast the long-term trend of COVID-19 outbreak. The learned parameters suggested the effectiveness of intervention measures taken in China.
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Posted 27 May, 2020
Forecasting the long-term trend of COVID-19 epidemic using a dynamic model
Posted 27 May, 2020
Background The current outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has recently been declared as a pandemic and spread over 200 countries and territories. Forecasting the long-term trend of the COVID-19 epidemic can help health authorities determine the transmission characteristics of the virus and take appropriate prevention and control strategies beforehand. Previous studies that applied the traditional epidemic models or machine learning models were subject to underfitting or overfitting problems.
Methods We propose a new model named Dynamic-Susceptible-Exposed-Infective-Quarantined (D-SEIQ), by making appropriate modifications of the Susceptible-Exposed-Infective-Recovered (SEIR) model and integrating machine learning based parameter optimization under epidemiological rational constraints. We used the model to predict the long-term reported cumulative numbers of COVID-19 cases in China from 27 January, 2020.
Results We evaluated our model on officially reported confirmed cases from three different regions in China, and the results proved the effectiveness of our model in terms of simulating and predicting the trend of COVID-19 outbreak. In China-Excluding-Hubei area within 7 days after the first public report, our model successfully and accurately predicted the 40 days long trend and the exact date of turning point. The predicted cumulative number (12,506) by 10, March 2020 was only 3·8% different with the actual number (13,005). The parameters obtained by our model proved the effectiveness of prevention and intervention strategies on epidemic control in China.
Conclusions The integrated approach of epidemic and machine learning models could accurately forecast the long-term trend of COVID-19 outbreak. The learned parameters suggested the effectiveness of intervention measures taken in China.
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Figure 5