Generalized logistic growth modeling of the COVID-19 pandemic in Asia

Abstract

Several months into the ongoing novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, this work provides a simple and direct projection of the outbreak spreading potential and the pandemic cessation dates in Chinese mainland, Iran, the Philippines and Chinese Taiwan, using the generalized logistic model (GLM). The short-term predicted number of cumulative COVID-19 cases matched the confirmed reports of those who were infected across the four countries and regions, and the long-term forecasts were capable to accurately evaluate the spread of the pandemic in Chinese mainland and Chinese Taiwan, where control measures such as social distancing were fully implemented and sustained, suggesting GLM as a valuable tool for characterizing the transmission dynamics process and the trajectory of COVID-19 pandemic along with the impact of interventions.

Keywords: COVID-19; Epidemic modeling; Forecasting; Generalized logistic model; Richards model; SARS-CoV-2.

Fig. 1

The generalized logistic growth model-predicted size of the COVID-19 pandemic in Chinese mainland, Iran, the Philippines and Chinese Taiwan. On the left (A-D): the daily number of new confirmed COVID-19 cases. On the right (E-H): the observed (black circles) and the model-fitted and predicted cumulative cases (grey solid line) over time. The grey circle denotes the predicted number of cumulative cases as of 10^th April 2020.