Tracking and forecasting milepost moments of the epidemic in the early-outbreak: framework and applications to the COVID-19

Huiwen Wang; Yanwen Zhang; Shan Lu; Shanshan Wang

However, there are some obvious shortcomings of forecasting method based on epidemic model in terms of outbreak prediction. For example, SEIR model is a mathematical method relying on an assumption of epidemiological parameters for disease progression, which is absent for the novel pathogen. For instance, the basic infection number R 0 , the daily recovery rate, the characteristics of the disease itself (such as the infection rate and the conversion rate of the latent to the infected), the daily exposure rate of the latent and infected, and their initial population infection status (total 3 population, infected, the initial value of the latent, the susceptible, the healer, etc.) and many other key parameters need to be set. For infectious diseases that have already appeared in the past, or those who have a large amount of data, it is not difficult to obtain these parameters. However, for unknown, sudden and early infectious diseases, obtaining these parameters is full of difficulties, which leads to a great uncertainty and limitations in the prediction of the epidemic situation using the SEIR model.