A systematic approach for COVID-19 predictions and parameter estimation

Pers Ubiquitous Comput. 2023;27(3):675-687. doi: 10.1007/s00779-020-01462-8. Epub 2020 Nov 6.

Abstract

The world is currently facing a pandemic called COVID-19 which has drastically changed our human lifestyle, affecting it badly. The lifestyle and the thought processes of every individual have changed with the current situation. This situation was unpredictable, and it contains a lot of uncertainties. In this paper, the authors have attempted to predict and analyze the disease along with its related issues to determine the maximum number of infected people, the speed of spread, and most importantly, its evaluation using a model-based parameter estimation method. In this research the Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered model with different conditions has been used for the analysis of COVID-19. The effects of lockdown, the light switch method, and parameter variations like contact ratio and reproduction number are also analyzed. The authors have attempted to study and predict the lockdown effect, particularly in India in terms of infected and recovered numbers, which show substantial improvement. A disease-free endemic stability analysis using Lyapunov and LaSalle's method is presented, and novel methods such as the convalescent plasma method and the Who Acquires Infection From Whom method are also discussed, as they are considered to be useful in flattening the curve of COVID-19.

Keywords: COVID-19; Convalescent plasma method; Lyapunov-LaSalle; Parameter estimation; Susceptible-Infectious-Recovered (SIR) model; Who Acquires Infection From Whom (WAIFW).