Absorbing Markov chains for analyzing COVID-19 infections

Recently, there are many works that proposed modeling approaches to describe the random movement of individuals for COVID-19 infection. However, these models have not taken into account some key aspects for disease such the prediction of expected time of patients remaining at certain health state before entering an absorption state (e.g., exit out of the system for ever such as death state or recovery). Therefore, we propose a dynamical model approach called the absorbing Markov chains for analyzing COVID-19 infections. From this modeling approach, we seek to focus and predict two states of absorption: recovery and death, as these two conditions are considered as important indicators in assessment of the health level. Based on the absorbing Markov model, the study suggested that there is a gradually increase in the predicted death number, while a decrease in the number of recovered individuals.