6 Predictor System for Tracing COVID-19 Spread

According to World Health Organization (WHO), the first case of COVID-19 inflicted pneumonia was reported in Wuhan in December 2019; today, not only china which was the center of this epidemic in the early stage but the whole world is affected with this virus. In the absence of any vaccine or treatment, the ferocity of any epidemic can be measured only by predicting its transmission among the population. Various evidences of human-to-human transmission by many clinical studies on COVID-19 have shown that its transmission rates are much higher than similar coronavirus such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) coronavirus and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) coronavirus. To predict the rate of transmission from an infected person into the local population in case of a pandemic like COVID-19, effective reproduction number (R0) is an important parameter. Effective reproduction number is an indication of transmissibility of the virus in a native population. It represents average number of new infections caused by a previously infected person. If the value of R0 is higher than 1, it means transmission of virus increases, and with R0 less than 1, transmission rate reduces. There are various mathematical models to predict effective reproduction number (R0) for a pandemic. The current chapter discusses various mathematical models based on susceptible exposed infectious recovered death cumulative (SEIRDC) structure.