COVID-19 Epidemic in Switzerland: Growth Prediction and Containment Strategy Using Artificial Intelligence and Big Data

Reza S. Abhari; Marcello Marini; Ndaona Chokani

Results and discussion: Due to a lack of available testing equipment, the Swiss authorities initially only tested the symptomatic individuals of the 65+ demographic, but then later added more testing for younger demographic groups. In Figure 4 , we compare, on a daily basis, our predictions of the 65+ demographic COVID-19 cases to data from Switzerland's Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH). It is not known to the authors whether, how, or over what time from the start of the pandemic, additional groups were also tested, which may partly explain the differences between our predictions and the data. Figure 5 compares the predicted and reported total numbers of death due to COVID-19. Our prediction estimates by 18 April 2020, a total of 720 deaths, of which 81% (586) are from the 65+ demographic. patients. It should be noted that the COVID-19 cases include both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases, and as such the predicted number of COVID-19 cases is significantly higher than the officially reported confirmed COVID-19 cases which are a subset of the total number of cases. The demographic distribution of COVID-19 infected individuals on 11 April 2020 is shown in Figure 8 .