The present outbreak of COVID-19 is a worldwide calamity for healthcare infrastructures. On a daily basis, a fresh batch of perplexing datasets on the numbers of positive and negative cases, individuals admitted to hospitals, mortality, hospital beds occupied, ventilation shortages, and so on is published. Infections have risen sharply in recent weeks, corresponding with the discovery of a new variant from South Africa (B.1.1.529 also known as Omicron). The early detection of dangerous situations and forecasting techniques is important to prevent the spread of disease and restart economic activities quickly and safely. In this paper, we used weekly mobility data to analyze the current situation in countries worldwide. A methodology for the statistical analysis of the current situation as well as for forecasting future outbreaks is presented in this paper in terms of deaths caused by COVID-19. Our method is evaluated with a multi-layer perceptron neural network (MLPNN), which is a deep learning model, to develop a predictive framework. Furthermore, the Case Fatality Ratio (CFR), Cronbach's alpha, and other metrics were computed to analyze the performance of the forecasting. The MLPNN is shown to have the best outcomes in forecasting the statistics for infected patients and deaths in selected regions. This research also provides an in-depth analysis of the emerging COVID-19 variants, challenges, and issues that must be addressed in order to prevent future outbreaks.
Keywords: B.1.1.529; COVID-19 variants; Omicron; artificial neural network; forecasting.