Generalized Richards model for predicting COVID-19 dynamics in Saudi Arabia based on particle swarm optimization Algorithm

• Main Authors: Rafat Zreiq (Author), Souad Kamel (Author), Sahbi Boubaker (Author), Asma A Al-Shammary (Author), Fahad D Algahtani (Author), Fares Alshammari (Author)
• Format: Book
• Published: AIMS Press, 2020-12-01T00:00:00Z.
• Subjects: article
• Online Access: Connect to this object online.

Summary

COVID-19 pandemic is spreading around the world becoming thus a serious concern for health, economic and social systems worldwide. In such situation, predicting as accurately as possible the future dynamics of the virus is a challenging problem for scientists and decision-makers. In this paper, four phenomenological epidemic models as well as Suspected-Infected-Recovered (SIR) model are investigated for predicting the cumulative number of infected cases in Saudi Arabia in addition to the probable end-date of the outbreak. The prediction problem is formulated as an optimization framework and solved using a Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm. The Generalized Richards Model (GRM) has been found to be the best one in achieving two objectives: first, fitting the collected data (covering 223 days between March 2^nd and October 10, 2020) with the lowest mean absolute percentage error (MAPE = 3.2889%), the highest coefficient of determination (R² = 0.9953) and the lowest root mean squared error (RMSE = 8827); and second, predicting a probable end date found to be around the end of December 2020 with a projected number of 378,299 at the end of the outbreak. The obtained results may help the decision-makers to take suitable decisions related to the pandemic mitigation and containment and provide clear understanding of the virus dynamics in Saudi Arabia.

Item Description

10.3934/publichealth.2020064
2327-8994