A Computational Model for Estimating the Progression of COVID-19 Cases in the US West and East Coasts

Yao Yu Yeo; Yao-Rui Yeo; Wan-Jin Yeo

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic (previously 2019-nCoV) originated from Wuhan city in Hubei province of China [37] . While the first case was reported in December 2019, it has since been thought to emerge as early as November 2019 [25] . Since then, COVID-19 has continued to spread around the world, and at this date, over 150 countries have been affected [3] . Although some countries have managed to contain COVID-19 efficiently, others previously thought to have been well-prepared for outbreaks due to higher living standards and healthcare quality have witnessed an unexpected number of cases [24] . As a result, the scale of COVID-19 within each nation has become relatively uncertain and has only heightened social and economic unrest. COVID-19 was first reported in the US on January 20, 2020 [11] . While little initial action was taken during the initial days, an exponential increase in the number of cases [24] spurred immediate actions in an attempt to contain COVID-19. For instance, social distancing is being enforced via the closure of educational institutions, restrictions on travel, and suspension of events, and research funding for SARS-CoV-2 has increased. Unfortunately, containment of COVID-19 has been hindered by various factors, such as the initial production of defective test kits [27] , a current limited availability of test kits [28, 29] , and lack of medical supplies [30, 31] . It is currently unclear how well the US healthcare system will cope with the COVID-19 pandemic over the next few months, especially in view of the lack of adequate projections of the scale of COVID-19