A minimal and adaptive prediction strategy for critical resource planning in a pandemic

Prakash, Meher K; Kaushal, Shaurya; Bhattacharya, Soumyadeep; Chandran, Akshay; Kumar, Aloke; Ansumali, Santosh

Current epidemiological models can in principle model the temporal evolution of a pandemic. However, any such model will rely on parameters that are unknown, which in practice are estimated using stochastic and poorly measured quantities. As a result, an early prediction of the long-term evolution of a pandemic will quickly lose relevance, while a late model will be too late to be useful for disaster management. Unless a model is designed to be adaptive, it is bound either to lose relevance over time, or lose trust and thus not have a second-chance for retraining. We propose a strategy for estimating the number of infections and the number of deaths, that does away with time-series modeling, and instead makes use of a 'phase portrait approach'. We demonstrate that, with this approach, there is a universality to the evolution of the disease across countries, that can then be usedto make reliable predictions. These same models can also be used to plan the requirements for critical resources during the pandemic. The approach is designed for simplicity of interpretation, and adaptivity over time. Using our model, we predict the number of infections and deaths in Italy and New York State, based on an adaptive algorithm which uses early available data, and show that our predictions closely match the actual outcomes. We also carry out a similar exercise for India, where in addition to projecting the number of infections and deaths, we also project the expected range of critical resource requirements for hospitalizations in a location.