The growth of COVID-19 in Spain. A view based on time-series forecasting methods

Carrión-García, Andrés; Jabaloyes, José; Grisales, Angela

The current COVID-19 crisis has required the scientific community to use different approaches to analyze and understand the pattern of the pandemic's evolution. Spain is one of the most affected countries in Europe. It has suffered heavily, with thousands of deaths, and a highly stressful situation that has affected the country's health system and all facets of day-to-day life. The period considered in the analysis runs from March 4, the date of the first official COVID-19 death, to April 7, which can be considered as the end of the pandemic's growth phase. The approach used in the study is time-series analysis, a statistical tool that explores the underlying inertia in the development of social, physical, or natural phenomena to predict their future evolution. ARIMA models have been applied. Accurate prediction models have been obtained, and the relationship between some of the time series used has been identified.