MSU study projects Covid cases to touch 49K by July

Vadodara: Covid-19 positive cases in the country are expected to 10.64 lakh while death toll could touch around 32,000 by July-end, according to a study published by MS University’s Department of Statistics.
The study done using the widely used Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model also show that the confirmed cases in Gujarat are expected to touch around 48,796 with 2,695 deaths and 36,310 recoveries by July.
“ARIMA model has been successfully used by researchers to predict cases in China, Thailand, South Korea, Iran, Italy and Brazil,” said Dr Khimya Tinani, who along with professor K Muralidharan guided the MSc students - Akash Deshmukh, Bhagyashree Patil, Tanvi Salat and Rajeshwari Rajodia.
The research ‘Analysis and forecasting of Covid-19 cases across hotspot states of India’ has been published in the journal of statistics and applications, a UGC Care listed journal.
“ARIMA model has been previously used for many other viral infections, flu and even for HIV-AIDS,” said Muralidharan.
“Going by the current trend, the cases are rising by 1.5 % on daily basis and this rise will continue if there is no intervention,” he said, adding that the peak cases will come between July 15 and August 15.
To check the accuracy of the model, the first round of forecast was done for the period between April 15 and April 25. For this, the statisticians had used data of the period between January 30 and April 14 as the base.
“After the first round of forecast, we checked the accuracy of the model by matching the predicted numbers with the actual numbers. The accuracy in predicting cumulative confirmed cases of India was 98% while model accuracy of cumulative recovery cases and death cases stood at 97% and 78% respectively,” said Tinani.
The researchers have now forecast the Covid-19 cases, recoveries and deaths till July 31 of India and its six hotspot states. “The forecast now has been prepared based on actual data available for the period between January 30 to June 20,” said Tinani.
The forecast suggests that confirmed Covid-19 cases in the country would be 10,64,142, deaths would be 32,278 and recoveries would be 6,90,496 by July 31.