COVID 19 Pandemic: A Real-time Forecasts & Prediction of Confirmed Cases, Active Cases using the ARIMA model &Public Health in West Bengal, India.

BackgroundCOVID-19 is an emerging infectious disease which has been declared a Pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) on March 11 2020. This pandemic has spread over the world in more than 200 countries. India is also adversely affected by this pandemic, and there are no signs of slowing down of the virus in coming time. The absence of a vaccine for COVID-19 is making the situation worse for the already overstretched Indian public health care system. As economic burden makes it increasingly difficult for our country to continue imposing control measures, it is vital for states like West Bengal to make predictions using time series forecasting for the upcoming cases, test kits, health care and estimated the requirement of Quarantine centers, isolation beds, ICU beds and ventilators for COVID-19 patients. ObjectiveThis study is forecasting the confirmed and active cases for COVID-19 until August, using time series ARIMA model & Public Health in West Bengal, India. MethodsWe used ARIMA model, and Auto ARIMA model for forecasting confirmed and active cases till the end of August month using time series data of COVID-19 cases in West Bengal, India from March 1, 2020, to June 4, 2020. ResultsWe are expecting that West Bengal will have around 62279 {+/-} 5000 Cases by the end of August based on our forecasts. Meanwhile Maharashtra, Punjab, Gujarat and Delhi (UT) will be the most affected states, having the highest number of active and confirmed cases at the end of August. Discussion and ConclusionThis forecasts show a very crucial situation for West Bengal in coming days and, the actual numbers can go higher than our estimates of confirmed case as Lockdown 5.0 & Unlock 1.0 will be implemented from 1st June 2020 in India, West Bengal will be observing a partial lift of the lockdown and in that case, there will be a surge in the number of daily confirmed and active cases. The requirement of Health care sector needs to be further improved isolation beds, ICUs and ventilators will also be needed to increase in that scenario. Inter State & Intra State Movement restrictions are lifted. Hence, Migrants returning to their homes due to loss of livelihood and income in the lockdown period may lead to a rise in the number of cases, which could not be accounted for in our projections. We suggest more of Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model in the health sector to accommodate COVID-19 patients adequately and reduce the burden of the already overstretched Indian public health care system, which will directly or indirectly affect the States in the time of crisis.