Glob Epidemiol. 1,000,000 cases of COVID-19 outside of China: The date predicted by a simple heuristic

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Glob Epidemiol. 2020 Mar 23:100023. doi: 10.1016/j.gloepi.2020.100023. [Epub ahead of print]
1,000,000 cases of COVID-19 outside of China: The date predicted by a simple heuristic.


Koczkodaj WW¹, Mansournia MA², Pedrycz W³, Wolny-Dominiak A⁴, Zabrodskii PF⁵, Strzaška D⁶, Armstrong T¹, Zolfaghari AH¹, Debski M⁷, Mazurek J⁸.

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Abstract

We forecast 1,000,000 COVID-19 cases outside of China by March 30, 2020 based on a heuristic and WHO situation reports. We do not model the COVID-19 pandemic; we model only the number of cases. The proposed heuristic is based on a simple observation that the plot of the given data is well approximated by an exponential curve. The exponential curve is used for forecasting the growth of new cases. It has been tested for the last situation report of the last day. Its accuracy has been 1.29% for the last day added and predicted by the 57 previous WHO situation reports (the date 18 March 2020). Prediction, forecast, pandemic, COVID-19, coronavirus, exponential growth curve parameter, heuristic, epidemiology, extrapolation, abductive reasoning, WHO situa- tion report.
? 2020 Published by Elsevier Inc.



PMID:32292911PMCID:PMC7118643DOI:10.1016/j.gloepi.2020.100023
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