Time series forecasting of COVID-19 transmission in Asia Pacific countries using deep neural networks

Personal and Ubiquitous Computing https://doi.org/10.1007/s00779-020-01494-0 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Time series forecasting of COVID-19 transmission in Asia Pacific countries using deep neural networks Hafiz Tayyab Rauf1 · M. Ikram Ullah Lali2 · Muhammad Attique Khan3 · Seifedine Kadry4 · Hanan Alolaiyan5 · Abdul Razaq6 · Rizwana Irfan7 Received: 27 June 2020 / Accepted: 18 November 2020 © Springer-Verlag London Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2021 Abstract The novel human coronavirus disease COVID-19 has become the fifth documented pandemic since the 1918 flu pandemic. COVID-19 was first reported in Wuhan, China, and subsequently spread worldwide. Almost all of the countries of the world are facing this natural challenge. We present forecasting models to estimate and predict COVID-19 outbreak in Asia Pacific countries, particularly Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and Bangladesh. We have utilized the latest deep learning techniques such as Long Short Term Memory networks (LSTM), Recurrent Neural Network (RNN), and Gated Recurrent Units (GRU) to quantify the intensity of pandemic for the near future. We consider the time variable and data non-linearity when employing neural networks. Each model’s salient features have been evaluated to foresee the number of COVID-19 cases in the next 10 days. The forecasting performance of employed deep learning models shown up to July 01, 2020, is more than 90% accurate, which shows the reliability of the proposed study. We hope that the present comparative analysis will provide an accurate picture of pandemic spread to the government officials so that they can take appropriate mitigation measures. Keywords COVID-19 · Convolutional neural networks · LSTM · RNN · GRU 1 Introduction At the beginning of December 2019, the extremely intense syndrome coronavirus (COVID-19) detected in the Chinese  Muhammad Attique Khan Seifedine Kadry 1 Department of Computer Science, University of Gujrat, Gujrat, Pakistan 2 Department of Computer Science, University of Education, Lahore 54770, Pakistan 3 Department of Computer Science, HITEC University Taxila, Taxila, Pakistan 4 Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Faculty of Science, Beirut Arab University, Beirut, Lebanon 5 Department of Mathematics, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia 6 Division of Science and Technology, Department of Mathematics, University of Education, Lahore 54000, Pakistan 7 Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Faculty of Science, University of Jeddah, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia city Wuhan caused the episode of a new coronavirus illness and China turned into the epicenter of this disease [28]. Fever, breathlessness, and dry cough are the known symptoms of this transferable disease [26]. Meanwhile, due to human traveling, the malady has spread more than 206 nations or regions of the world, ultimately the USA and Europe have emerged as new focal points [6, 43]. The World Health Organization announced this disease as a pandemic disease on the 11th of March 2020 [50]. After World War II, the COVID-19 has been considered as the major crisis for the world’s economy and health [7]. On the 17th of May, the confirmed patients of COVID-19 were 4799266 whereas 316520 people lost their lives due to this pandemic [51]. These figures surpassed the records of two carnivorous epidemics (SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV). Since there is no medical treatment/vaccine of coronavirus, different nations have adopted different measures to control this epidemic. Strict lockdown, partial lockdown, closure of all educational institutes, and dismissal of all types of flights are the most common in all. On January 23, 2020, the Local administration of Wuhan imposed a strict lockdown, followed by many neighboring cities soon after [17]. They suspended all types of public transport and advised the citizens to stay at home. Pers Ubiquit Comput Due to the unavailability of the proper cure for this malady, keeping up social distancing is the best way to decrease COVID-19 transmission from one person to another 10. Ultimately the other countries also followed the Chinese model of lockdown curfews and quarantines. On March 9, 2020, the Government of Italy forced a national quarantine due to the exponential increase in COVID-19 patients. Furthermore, they confined the movement of citizens except for medical emergency and supply of necessary goods and services. The similar measures were taken by Argentina (March 19, 2020 [4]), Spain (March 14, 2020 [31]), the USA (various states from March 19, 2020 [12]), South Africa (March 26, 2020 [11]), the UK (March 23, 2020 [45]) and numerous different countries. After China, Iran became the epicenter of this disease in Asia. Consistently, several Pakistani citizens travel to Iran to perform religious activities. On February 23, 2020, as the number of Corona patients began to rise, Pakistan shuts its border with Iran [49], but hundreds of Pakistanis somehow managed to return, either by diverting through Afghanistan to Pakistan or by any other way. The first two cases of COVID-19, from Karachi and Islamabad each, were confirmed by the Government of Pakistan officials on 26 February. Both cases have recent travel history to Iran. To forestall the infection spread to other people, the Government decided to isolate the visitors on their arrival from Iran in Taftan, a town in Baluchistan near the Pak-Iran border [19, 37]. Such a tempestuous situation of epidemic outbreaks raised several general questions: will coronavirus persists until the discovery of its vaccine or it will automatically be abolished after a certain period? How much time does the medical scientist need to prepare its proper medicine/vaccine? How many people will be affected by this epidemic? What could be the death/recovery rate among the affected patients? Does it vary in different age groups and regions of the world? If Yes, then what could be the possible reasons? To what extent is the lockdown policy effective to reduce the spread? What are the side effects of lockdown and how long is it affordable for different countries? Usually, medical predictions are not precise while their unreliability is underestimated [29, 30]. Since the number of cases to be investigated can be estimated single-handedly, therefore the prediction of the future of pandemics and epidemics is not an easy task [40]. Regardless of the inaccuracies related to medical forecasting, still these are important by portraying a picture of the present circumstances to the public so that a comprehensive preparation can be made for the future challenges. The uncertain circumstances of the epidemic forced the scientists and data analysts to proposed COVID-19 spreading models to predict its intensity shortly [1, 3, 18, 32, 33, 38, 52]. Similarly, some optimization techniques [36] can also help to optimize such models and leads to more optimal results. In recent weeks, numerous studies on COVID-19 have been reported, but (...truncated)