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Validation of the forecasts for the international spread of the coronavirus

disease 2019 (COVID-19) done with the Be-CoDiS mathematical model

Technical Report · February 2020

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.33677.69609/1

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Validation of the forecasts for the international spread

of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) done
with the Be-CoDiS mathematical model
Benjamin Ivorra and Angel M. Ramos
Interdisciplinary Mathematics Institute (IMI),
Department of Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Analysis
and MOMAT Research Group.
Complutense University of Madrid.
Plaza de Ciencias, 3, 28040, Madrid, Spain

Email: ivorra@mat.ucm.es; angel@mat.ucm.es

Technical Report
28 February 2020

Warning: This document is a work in progress and should be updated once more data
are available.

I. Context of this report

A new and fast spreading coronavirus was detected in Wuhan, Hubei province, in China on
December 2019 (see [1]). Regarding the emergency of this situation, our research group (see
[2]) has performed an analysis of this situation by using the Be-CoDiS model (see [3, 4]).

http://www.mat.ucm.es/~ivorra/softbecodis.htm

On 8 February 2020, we proposed two forecasts of the possible evolution of this epidemic. This
document is available at [5]:

www.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.31460.94081

More precisely, we considered:

Forecast 1 (FC1): we start the simulation considering 1 index case in China on 8

December 2019 and we simulate the epidemic up to the end of the epidemic. In this
case, the model should estimate well the dynamics of the epidemic in China, but may
fail to estimate with precision the epidemic in other countries (due to the difference
between the predicted and observed data on 8 February 2020). Furthermore, this
forecast could capture possible infected people not yet detected in countries currently
not affected by the epidemic.
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 1. Forecast 2 (FC2): we start the simulation from 8 February 2019 (considering data
reported on this date) up to the end of the epidemic. This simulation should give a better
estimation of the epidemic magnitude in countries currently affected by the disease,
other than China. However, the initial condition of persons in states E, I and H are
estimated using the technique reported in [4] and assuming that a person stays in state
I 8 days (instead of being progressively reduced, due to the application of control
measures).

Those forecasts were performed calibrating the model with data up to 8 February 2020. These
data were based on the unique protocol used by authorities up to 12 February 2020 [6,7,8]. This
protocol consisted in considering a person as infected according to results from laboratory tests.

However, on 13 February 2020, the Hubei (the Chinese province with the largest number of
cases and deaths) authorities decided [10] to report as infected not only people who was
positive in laboratory tests, but also clinically diagnosed cases in that province. This supposed a
sudden increase of around 15.000 cases in one day [8].

In addition, up to 16 February 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) decided to cotinue
reporting only cases confirmed with laboratory tests in its situation reports [7]. On 17 February
2020, the WHO change its protocol to count cases and decided (see [11]) to include in its reports
the data provided by the Hubei province. This supposed a sudden increase of around 20.000
cases in one day [6].

On 21 February 2020 China (and WHO) “has revised their guidance on case classification for
COVID-19, removing the classification of 'clinically diagnosed’ previously used for Hubei
province, and retaining only ‘suspected’ and ‘confirmed’ for all areas, the latter requiring
laboratory confirmation. Some previously reported ‘clinically diagnosed’ cases are thus
expected to be discarded over the coming days as laboratory testing is conducted and some are
found to be COVID-19-negative” (see [12]).

Thus, different criteria have been used in the offical reports, with even different data in chinese
and WHO reports from 13 February 2020 up to 16 February 2020. This hinders the calibration of
our mathematical model and makes very difficult an accurate forecast. Nevertheless, so far our
forecast is still good, as shwon in the following section.

II. Validation
Considering the two sources of reported data (i.e., the WHO and the Government of China) and
the results obtained with our last forecasts (published on 8 February 2020) up to 27 February
2020, we report the following data:

• On Figure 1, we report the cumulative number of cases in China.

• On Figure 2, we report the cumulative number of cases worldwide.
• On Figure 3, we report the cumulative number of deaths worldwide.

We observe that, up to 16 February 2020, results of Forecast FC1 estimates quite well the
number of cases reported by the WHO.

On the other side, the results related to Forecast FC2 fit better the data from the Government
of China (and also the data reported by the WHO from 17 February 2020).

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Regarding the number of deaths, the estimation done using Forecast FC2 is closer to the real
situation than FC1. We point out that the reported number of deaths is out of the range of our
forecast on 13 February 2020, but this is due to a mistake in the report given by the Chinese
authorities, who, the following day, removed 108 deaths, that had been included by mistake [9].

On 14 February 2020, the first case in Egypt (and also in Africa) was reported. This is one of the
few African countries that was included in the map of our forecast showing the countries with
higher risk of infection.

We report on Figure 4 the reported cumulated number of cases for South Korea, Italy and Iran
starting from 20 February 2020. On 20 February 2020, those countries have been affected by
the disease with a dramatic growth of the reported cases. This behavior was not predicted by
our model in our last forecast. Indeed, data reported just before 8 February 2020 tends to show
a reduction in the disease spread inside China and worldwide. This particular change in the
behavior of the epidemic was unexpected.

As a result of this important change, model fails to predict the introduction of the disease in
Iran, and subsequently, it fails to predict cases in several countries infected by people returning
from Iran. Additionally, the sudden increase of number of cases in Italy has provoked the spread
of the epidemic to other countries not detected by the model.

Model predicted correctly the spread of the disease in the Netherlands and Romania.

In conclusion, from a general point of view:

• From 9 February to 20 February, the observed data are in the range of the values
estimated by Forecasts FC1 and FC2.
• From 21 February up to 27 February, the reported of cases in China are close to those
predicted by FC2 and the number of deaths are in the range of the forecasted values.
However, focusing on the number of cases worldwide, the gap between the predicted
and the observed data is increasing and is not negligible.

Regarding the recent changes in the dynamic of the spread worldwide, we need to recalibrate
the model in order to update our forecasts. However, we first require gathering more data in
order to estimate well the dynamics of the epidemic in recently infected countries in order to
perform reliable new forecasts.

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Acknowledgments
This work was carried out thanks to the financial support of the Spanish ``Ministry of Economy and
Competitiveness'' under projects MTM2015-64865-P; and the research group MOMAT (Ref. 910480)
supported by `` Complutense University of Madrid''.

References
[1] http://who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/

[2] http://www.mat.ucm.es/momat/

[3] http://www.mat.ucm.es/~ivorra/softbecodis.htm

[4] B. Ivorra, D. Ngom and A.M. Ramos, Be-CoDiS: A Mathematical Model to Predict the Risk of Human Diseases Spread Between
Countries—Validation and Application to the 2014–2015 Ebola Virus Disease Epidemic. Bulletin of Mathematical Biology. 2015. Volume
77, Issue 9, pp 1668–1704. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11538-015-0100-x - Preprint: https://eprints.ucm.es/28809/

[5]B. Ivorra and A. M. Ramos, Application of the Be-CoDiS mathematical model to forecast the international spread of the 2019–20
Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. ResearchGate http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.31460.94081

[6] Novel Coronavirus (2019-nCoV) situation reports. https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/situation-

reports/

[7] https://bnonews.com/index.php/2020/01/the-latest-coronavirus-cases/

[8] https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

[9] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/14/china-writes-off-108-deaths-in-hubei-province-cites-counting-error.html

[10] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200213-sitrep-24-covid-
19.pdf?sfvrsn=9a7406a4_4

[11] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200217-sitrep-28-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=a19cf2ad_2

[12] https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200220-sitrep-31-covid-
19.pdf?sfvrsn=dfd11d24_2

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 Number of cases in China
83000

78000

73000

68000

63000

58000

53000

48000

43000

38000

33000
08/02/2020 11/02/2020 14/02/2020 17/02/2020 20/02/2020 23/02/2020 26/02/2020

WHO Gov. Of China Forecast FC1 Forecast FC2

Figure 1. Cumulative number of cases reported in China by the WHO and the Government of China and
estimated by the Forecasts FC1 and FC2

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 Number of cases worldwide
83000

73000

63000

53000

43000

33000
08/02/2020 10/02/2020 12/02/2020 14/02/2020 16/02/2020 18/02/2020 20/02/2020 22/02/2020 24/02/2020 26/02/2020 28/02/2020

WHO Gov. of China Forecast FC1 Forecast FC2

Figure 2. Cumulative number of cases reported worldwide by the WHO and the Government of China
and estimated by the Forecasts FC1 and FC2

Number of deaths worldwide

2650

2150

1650

1150

650
08/02/2020 10/02/2020 12/02/2020 14/02/2020 16/02/2020 18/02/2020 20/02/2020 22/02/2020 24/02/2020 26/02/2020 28/02/2020

WHO+ Gov. Of China Forecast FC1 Forecast FC2

Figure 3. Cumulative number of deaths reported worldwide by the WHO and the Government of China
and estimated by the Forecasts FC1 and FC2

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 Number of cases in some selected countries
2501

2001

1501

1001

501

1
20-02-20 21-02-20 22-02-20 23-02-20 24-02-20 25-02-20 26-02-20 27-02-20 28-02-20

South Korea Italy Iran

Figure 2. Cumulative number of cases reported worldwide by the WHO in South Korea, Italy and Iran

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