MOFTAKHAR L, SEIF M, SAFE MS. Exponentially Increasing Trend of Infected Patients with COVID-19 in Iran: A Comparison of Neural Network and ARIMA Forecasting Models.
IRANIAN JOURNAL OF PUBLIC HEALTH 2020;
49:92-100. [PMID:
34268211 PMCID:
PMC8266002 DOI:
10.18502/ijph.v49is1.3675]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 21] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/05/2020] [Accepted: 03/14/2020] [Indexed: 12/01/2022]
Abstract
BACKGROUND
The outbreak of COVID-19 is rapidly spreading around the world and became a pandemic disease. For help to better planning of interventions, this study was conducted to forecast the number of daily new infected cases with COVID-19 for next thirty days in Iran.
METHODS
The information of observed Iranian new cases from 19th Feb to 30th Mar 2020 was used to predict the number of patients until 29th Apr. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models were applied for prediction. The data was prepared from daily reports of Iran Ministry of Health and open datasets provided by the JOHN Hopkins. To compare models, dataset was separated into train and test sets. Mean Squared Error (MSE) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) was the comparison criteria.
RESULTS
Both algorithms forecasted an exponential increase in number of newly infected patients. If the spreading pattern continues the same as before, the number of daily new cases would be 7872 and 9558 by 29th Apr, respectively by ANN and ARIMA. While Model comparison confirmed that ARIMA prediction was more accurate than ANN.
CONCLUSION
COVID-19 is contagious disease, and has infected many people in Iran. Our results are an alarm for health policy planners and decision-makers, to make timely decisions, control the disease and provide the equipment needed.
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