A Conceptual Model for the Prediction of Coronavirus (Covid-19) Spread in Nigeria

The novel coronavirus (Covid-19) was first reported in Wuhan in the Hubei province of China in late December, 2019. The outbreak of the disease has ravaged more than 200 countries and regions of the world which necessitated the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare it as a pandemic and a health challenge in the 21st century of international concern. The rate of its spread and severity has been an issue of concern especially in developing countries that have weak health system. With the radical increase in the number of confirmed cases and recorded deaths globally due to Covid -19 infections, it is crucial to predict the rate of the disease spread for sustainable interventions from relevant and donor agencies using infectious disease modeling tool. A modified Susceptibility-Exposure-Infection-Recovery (SEIR) has been adopted to analyse and predict the spread of the infections in Nigeria for the period of May 1, 2020 to June 9, 2020 using the life updates data of confirmed cases available on the website of Nigeria Centre for Disease Control. R studio software was used for the implementation of the model and prediction. The result of the prediction shows an accuracy of 72 per cent.