Trend Analysis and Predictions of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Ethiopia

Background: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is affecting both lives of millions of people and the global economy of the world day by day. This study aimed to determine the trend of COVID-19 and its predictions in Ethiopia. Study Design: This study was conducted based on a time series design. Methods: The required data were collected from the Ethiopian COVID-19 monitoring platform beginning from the onset of the disease in the country until March 28, 2021. Furthermore, the auto-regressive integrated moving average models were used on daily-based time series. The Poisson and Negative Binomial regression were also employed to notice the effects of months on the transmission and disease-related human deaths. Results: The mean daily infection and death of COVID-19 in Ethiopia were 533.47±466.62 and 7.45±6.72, respectively. The peaks of infection and deaths in this country were in March, 2021, and August, 2020. In addition, the trend of daily new deaths (P=0.000) and infection (P=0.000) was significantly increasing. It is expected that around 10 million (8.6%) and 138,084.64 (0.12%) Ethiopians will be infected and die, respectively. Conclusions: The disease transmission and deaths vary from day to day and month to month. The highest peaks of COVID-19 infection and death were in March 2021 and August 2020. For the next end of August 2021, the COVID-19 daily new infection, new death, total case, and total death are expected to be increased. If this epidemic disease is not controlled, Ethiopia will face a severe shortage of hospitals, and the outbreak even becomes worse.