The current COVID-19 wave will likely be mitigated in the second-line European countries

Samuel Soubeyrand; Melina Ribaud; Virgile Baudrot; Denis Allard; Denys Pommeret; Lionel Roques

Here, we propose a probabilistic and statistical framework implementing the intuitive approach described above. To partly avoid the drawback of the potential reduced number of predictors (i.e., countries ahead in time), we propose to model the mortality curve of the country of interest as a mixture of predictors, instead of selecting a single predictor. This mixture-model approach is applied to a set of European countries that have, today, intermediate cumulative numbers of deaths due to COVID-19. Our aim is to assess whether these countries (in the second line with respect to the COVID-19 wave) will follow the trajectories of countries in the front line, with either fast-and-severe epidemics or relatively mild epidemics. The second scenario would be favorable for limiting the mortality due to COVID-19 in Europe.