Nowcasting and Forecasting the Spread of COVID-19 and Healthcare Demand In Turkey, A Modelling Study

Abdullah Ucar; Seyma Arslan; Muhammed Yusuf Ozdemir

The basic principles in preventing the spread of the pandemic can be listed as 1) reducing the population that is not immune to the disease, 2) reducing the number of contacts or 3) acquire immunity. In cases where vaccination is not possible and the non-immune population cannot be reduced, the only effective means of combating the pandemic is to keep the number of contact contacts under control. In our study, we estimate that the R0 values decreased to 1.38 as a result of existing measures in Turkey. This decreases the rate of spread and attack rate of the pandemic. However, in the case of no intervention the attack rate will be 88.1%, while in the case of a general curfew, this value will decrease to 0.7% and mortality rates decline from 0.54% to 0.02%. Complete control of the pandemic is possible by keeping R0 below 1. For this, additional measures are needed. As the economic and social burden of the interventions to be made to reduce the R0 value below 1 are very high, the solution with the highest costbenefit ratio is the development of a new vaccine molecule. These numbers will change if a new treatment or vaccine is developed throughout the year.