Modeling COVID-19: Forecasting and analyzing the dynamics of the outbreak in Hubei and Turkey

ibrahim Halil Aslan; Mahir Demir; Michael Morgan Wise; Suzanne Lenhart

is the (which was not peer-reviewed) The copyright holder for this preprint . https: //doi.org/10.1101 //doi.org/10. /2020 The rate of reported cases is about 1.8; this rate is larger than what we observed in Hubei. This implies that in terms of numbers of COVID-19 tests conducted per day, Turkey is now doing a better job than Hubei, China at a comparable time in Hubei's outbreak. The efficiency of quarantine also seems to be very good in Turkey, given the approximately 85% reduction in the contact rate of COVID-19 obtained by our parameter estimation. On the other hand, the quarantine rate is about 0.088, which is small when compared with the quarantine rate in Hubei (the rate was 0.096 in Hubei). In Hubei, the population transitioned to quarantine class very quickly (almost in two weeks), but in Turkey the movement to quarantine has been very slow in comparison (see Figure 8 ), suggesting why the contact rate is higher in Turkey when we compare to the contact rate in Hubei (See Table 1 and 3 for these rates). It is still possible to increase the quarantine rate (the rate, per day, of transition to quarantine class) and the number of COVID-19 tests given each day in Turkey to make a reduction in the number of cases and deaths (See Figures 9 and 10 ). In Figures 9 and 10 , the red curves are obtained using base parameters from Table 1 and 3, and the other curves obtained by varying the quarantine rate s q and the rate of reported cases i q . When we use the base parameter values which are obtained from our fitting, Turkey then will have about 203,700 cases and 8,269 deaths. If Turkey can increase the number of individuals in quarantine and the number of daily COVID-19 tests, then, depending on the magnitude of the increases, the number of cases and deaths can decrease significantly (see Figures 9 and 10 ). When we look at trajectories of cumulative cases and deaths in Figures 9 and 10 , in the worst-case scenario (the black curves) of the study, Turkey will have about 281,500 cases and 11,430 deaths. These projections decrease to 148,100 cases and 6,005 deaths if Turkey can increase the number of individuals in quarantine and the number of COVID-19 tests.