India may surpass US tally by October: BITS study

HYDERABAD: India is likely to surpass the United States of America (USA) as the country with the most number of Covid-19 cases by the first week of October, shows research by the BITS Pilani, Hyderabad.
A three-member research team, which has been studying the Covid-19 trends for the past four months, said that they have arrived at this conclusion by using two different models.
“We will witness over 70 lakh Covid-19 cases by the first week of October to emerge as the country with the highest number of Covid-19 infections,” said TSL Radhika, lead researcher on this project.
Speaking to TOI, Radhika, a professor at the department of applied mathematics, BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, said that they have used advanced statistical learning techniques in their research.
“We have used four to five models for our research. Using two models — autoregressive model (AR) and the growth rate model —we could arrive at this conclusion. Even our last prediction, that India will surpass Brazil by September 5 or September 6 was almost correct as we became the country with the most number of infections on September 7.”
Explaining the AR model, she said that the model helps in figuring out the exact amount of data required to give out prediction with the least margin of error. “Using these models, we could predict how the trend is going to be in the next one month,” she added and said that the team has communicated its findings to the International Journal of Infectious Diseases, published by Elsevier, on Thursday.
We have used four to five models for our research. Using two models — autoregressive model (AR) and the growth rate model —we could arrive at this conclusion