Outbreak Trends of Coronavirus Disease–2019 in India: A Prediction

Tiwari, Sunita; Kumar, Sushil; Guleria, Kalpna

OBJECTIVE: The objective of this paper is to prepare the government and citizens of India to take or implement the control measures proactively to reduce the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). METHOD: In this work, the COVID-19 outbreak in India has been predicted based on the pattern of China using a machine learning approach. The model is built to predict the number of confirmed cases, recovered cases, and death cases based on the data available between January 22, 2020, and April 3, 2020. The time series forecasting method is used for prediction models. RESULTS: The COVID-19 effects are predicted to be at peak between the third and fourth weeks of April 2020 in India. This outbreak is predicted to be controlled around the end of May 2020. The total number of predicted confirmed cases of COVID-19 might reach around 68 978, and the number of deaths due to COVID-19 are predicted to be 1557 around April 25, 2020, in India. If this outbreak is not controlled by the end of May 2020, then India will face a severe shortage of hospitals, and it will make this outbreak even worse. CONCLUSION: The COVID-19 pandemic may be controlled if the Government of India takes proactive steps to aggressively implement a lockdown in the country and extend it further. This presented epidemiological model is an effort to predict the future forecast of COVID-19 spread, based on the present scenario, so that the government can frame policy decisions, and necessary actions can be initiated.