Prediction of the time evolution of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Italy by a Gauss Error Function and Monte Carlo simulations

Ignazio Ciufolini; Antonio Paolozzi

The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not peer-reviewed) is . https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.27.20045104 doi: medRxiv preprint To evaluate the standard deviation relative to the date of the flex, we have used two methods. The first one is to fit the cumulative diagnosed positive cases in Italy using data from the beginning, February 15, 2020 (included) to March 16, 2020 (included), then from February 15, 2020 to March 17, 2020 and so on, until March 26, 2020 (included), thus getting 11 evaluations of the date of the flex. We then evaluated the standard deviation of these 11 points and we obtained a 1-sigma standard deviation of 3 days. The date of the flex has a quasi oscillating behavior whose amplitude is decreasing by increasing the final date of the analysis, i.e., increasing the number of points used in the fit. The 2sigma (95.5% probability) and 3-sigma (99.7% probability) uncertainties in the day of the flex are then 6 days and 9 days respectively. In regard to the date of a substantial reduction in the number of cumulative positive cases in Italy (below 100 cases), the standard deviation is 6 days (68.2% probability), 12 days (95.5% probability) and 18 days (99.7% probability).