Statistical Prediction of the Evolution of COVID-19 outbreak in Egypt (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The number of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Egypt has been on the rise. OBJECTIVE The development of a reasonable statistical model to predict the evolution of the COVID-19 epidemic is essential in the effort to establish a strategy for flatting the infection curve. METHODS Here we report on the results of the implementation of the susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered (SEIR) mathematical model on the official data. RESULTS These results suggest that the peak of the infection curve might be reached on July 27, 2020, with around 820,000 of the cases of infection. Due to restrictions of the diagnosis policy in Egypt, this number is predicted to be lower, i.e. , around 110,000. In addition, the reproduction number will continue to be reduced, largely due to the government countermeasures. It is predicted to achieve approximately 0.611 by the middle of November. CONCLUSIONS Given the continuation of the current measures, the first wave of the outbreak in Egypt is expected to subside. The computational model elaborated here could be readily applied to numerous other countries and their individual geographic regions. CLINICALTRIAL None