ARIMA-based forecasting of total COVID-19 cases in the USA and India

Cihan, P.

The coronavirus pandemic first started in Wuhan, China. The pandemic then spread rapidly all over the world. The virus wreaked unprecedented havoc worldwide. Researchers are using a variety of mathematical and machine learning-based prediction models to predict the future trend of the pandemic. In this study, autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) models were developed to forecast the expected daily confirmed COVID-19 cases for the next two weeks in the United States (USA) and India, which are most affected by the pandemic. ARIMA (0,2,1) and ARIMA (1,2,3) models with the lowest mean absolute percent error (MAPE) were selected as the best models for USA and India, respectively (MAPEUSA=1.04%, MAPEINDIA=0.41%). According to these models, it is predicted that the total number of cases in the USA will be 27.201 million and 10.788 million in India on February 04, 2021. This study shows that ARIMA models are suitable for predicting the prevalence of COVID-19 in the future. Analysis results can shed light on understanding the trends of the pandemic in these countries. © 2021 IEEE.