A New, Simple Projection Model for COVID-19 Pandemic

BackgroundWith the worldwide outbreak of COVID-19, an accurate model to predict how the coronavirus pandemic will evolve in individual countries becomes important and urgent. Our goal is to provide a prediction model to help policy makers in different countries address the epidemic outbreak and adjust the control policies to contain the spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-Cov-2) more effectively. MethodsUnlike the classic public health and virus propagation models, this new projection model takes both government intervention and public response into account to generate reliable projections of the outbreak 10 days to 2 weeks in advance. This method is an observation based projection similar than the classic Moores Law in miroelectronics. The Moores law is not based on any physics law and yet has anticipated the development of microelectronics for decades. This work is an empirical relation to decribe the evolution of epidemic to pandemic situations in different countries. The country was selected as an observation unit because the regulation and political decision is an national decision for numerous measures such as the implementation of social distancing, the quarantine of suspected cases, and the closing of borders to achieve territorial containment. FindingsThis model has been successfully applied to predict the evolution of pendemic situation in China. Then the model was also validated by the South Korean data. With a reduction of cases calculated as reduction coefficient of the increase rate of daily cases Rc = 2% per day, we observed a very efficient policy with a strict systematic control in both China and South Korea. For the moment, the Canada, USA, Australia may have difficulties to limit the fast evolution of the epidemic. With a Rc<0.5%, its particularly important for the USA to consider escalating the control measures because the affected cases can reach more than one million very soon. InterpertationDue to the difference of national disciplines and historical culture, the national policy may be implemented and observed with different efficiency. The starting point where the government decided to apply total containment can also play a key role for the evolution of the pendemic situation. The model will allow each national government of the nations still affected by the pandemic to project the situation for the coming 10 to 14 days. Its very important for the deployment of national and international efforts to stop the pandemic situation. FundingNational Key R&D Program of China (Ministry of Science & Technology (MOST, China))