Mathematical framework to model Covid-19 daily deaths

Barman, P.; Deb, N.; Mukherjee, S.

The novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) pandemic has caused widespread socio-economic disruption and, as of 04/07/2020, resulted in more than 72,614 confirmed deaths worldwide. Robust prediction of the trajectory of the death incidence curve is helpful for policy decisions during this ongoing crisis. We propose a non-parametric model to fit the number of daily deaths in a region, which hypothesizes that the death incidence curve will have a convex shape in the beginning, a concave shape near the peak, and a convex shape in the final stage of the death incidence curve after the peak. Using this, we performed robust short-term predictions on phases in five countries worldwide and five US states. Our analysis shows while the five states are all at peaks or past their peaks, US as a country is possibly not at peak yet. Our model can be easily fitted on daily death data from any region.