Modeling the Corona Virus Outbreak in IRAN

Abstract

AbstractBackgroundAs the outbreak of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a worldwide pandemic, and it is rapidly expanding in Iran, real-time analyses of epidemiological data are needed to increase situational awareness and inform interventions. In this study, we built a predictive model based on the cumulative trend of new cases and deaths for the top five provinces. We will also look at modeling the trends for confirmed cases, deaths and recovered for the whole country.MethodIn this study, we have chosen to apply the exponential smoothing model to iteratively forecast future values of a regular time series from weighted averages of past daily values. This method is exponential because the value of each level is influenced by every preceding actual value to an exponentially decreasing degree – more recent values are given greater weight. The available data is too small to identify seasonal patterns and make a predictable variation in value, such as annual fluctuation in temperature related to the season. The trend is a tendency of the data to increase or decrease over time.ResultsIf no control is applied, it is expected that over 40,000 people will be infected in Tehran by mid-June. However, if the control measures are successfully implemented, the COV-19 virus outbreak is expected to decline in early April by the end of May (70 days). In the scenario, that no further actions are implemented, the spread of COVID-19 is expected to continue slowly, reaching 21,000 by mid-June. The same process has been applied to review the confirmed cases, deaths and recovered dataset. The forecast has been carried out for the next 30 days; a shorter timeframe has been selected as there is a high probability that the Iranian New Year’s celebration, Farvardin, first month of spring (30th March in Western calendar) will have an impact on the infection rate following the event. The best predictive model predicts the number of reported deaths of COVDI-19 to be between 3,000–5,000 and the number of recovered cases between 5,000 – 30,000 from the total confirmed cases in the range of 35,000-70,000 infected cases.ConclusionsThe Modeling of Covid-19 outbreak shows that the number of patients and deaths is still increasing. Contagious diseases follow an exponential model and the same be Haves this one. This is because the virus can spread to others and finally each person turns into a carrier of the virus and transmit it to another person. Disease control depends on disconnection and social distancing. In addition, many factors are effective in stopping the disease. These include citizens’ participation in the prevention process, health education, the effectiveness of instructive traditions, environmental conditions, and so on.