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Quantitative Biology

ISSN 2095-4689

ISSN 2095-4697(Online)

CN 10-1028/TM

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Quant. Biol.    2021, Vol. 9 Issue (1) : 93-99    https://doi.org/10.15302/J-QB-020-0232
LETTER
Forecasting the development of the COVID-19 epidemic by nowcasting: when did things start to get better?
Yuehui Zhang1, Lin Chen2, Qili Shi3, Zhongguang Luo2(), Libing Shen4()
1. Spine Center, Xin Hua Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200092, China
2. Department of Digestive Diseases of Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai 200040, China
3. Stem Cell and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory, Ningbo No. 2 Hospital, Ningbo 315010, China
4. Institute of Neuroscience, Shanghai Institute for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China
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Abstract

Background: Now the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic becomes a global phenomenon and its development concerns billions of peoples’ lives. The development of the COVID-19 epidemic in China could be used as a reference for the other countries’ control strategy.

Methods: We used a classical susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) model to forecast the development of the COVID-19 epidemic in China by nowcasting. The linear regression analyses were employed to predict the COVID-19 epidemic’s inflexion point. Finally, we used a susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) model to simulate the development of the COVID-19 epidemic in China throughout 2020.

Results: Our nowcasts show that the COVID-19 transmission rate started to slow down on January 30. The linear regression analyses further show that the inflexion point of this epidemic would arrive between February 17 and 18. The final SEIR model simulation forecasted that the COVID-19 epidemic would probably infect about 82,000 people and last throughout 2020 in China. We also applied our method to USA’s and global COVID-19 data and the nowcasts show that the development of COVID-19 pandemic is not optimistic in the rest of 2020.

Conclusion: The COVID-19 epidemic’s scale in China is much smaller than the previous estimations. After implemented strict control and prevention measures, such as city lockdown, it took a week to slow down the COVID-19 transmission and about four weeks to really mitigate the COVID-19 prevalence in China.
Keywords forecast      COVID-19 epidemic      development     
Just Accepted Date: 18 December 2020   Online First Date: 05 January 2021    Issue Date: 31 March 2021
 Cite this article:   
Yuehui Zhang,Lin Chen,Qili Shi, et al. Forecasting the development of the COVID-19 epidemic by nowcasting: when did things start to get better?[J]. Quant. Biol., 2021, 9(1): 93-99.
 URL:  
https://academic.hep.com.cn/qb/EN/10.15302/J-QB-020-0232
https://academic.hep.com.cn/qb/EN/Y2021/V9/I1/93
Date The reported infected cases The calibrated number of infected cases The reported recovered cases The calibrated number of recovered cases
2020/01/23 830 876.96 34 37.44
2020/01/24 1287 1289.74 38 41.27
2020/01/25 1975 1991.59 49 54.38
2020/01/26 2744 2764.4 51 56.87
Tab.1  The reported infected and recovered cases and the calibrated number of infected and recovered cases in our SIR model
Date The reported infected cases The predicted infected cases The reported recovered cases The predicted recovered cases
2020/01/24 1287 1020.23 38 43.76
2020/01/25 1975 1525.83 49 48.99
2020/01/26 2744 2365.41 51 64.73
2020/01/27 4515 3326.47 60 68.55
Tab.2  The reported infected and recovered cases and the predicted infected and recovered on the next day
Fig.1  Comparison of our nowcasts with the reported numbers in China.
Fig.2  The forecast of the development of COVID-19 epidemic in China.
Fig.3  Comparison of our nowcasts with the reported numbers in USA and world.
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