COVID-19 Pandemic Analysis for a Country’s Ability to Control the Outbreak Using Little’s Law: Infodemiology Approach

Since the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), all countries across the globe have been trying to control its spread. A country’s ability to control the epidemic depends on how well its health system accommodates COVID-19 patients. This study aimed to assess the ability of different countries to contain the COVID-19 epidemic in real-time with the number of confirmed cases, deaths and recovered cases. Using the dataset provided by the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX), we analyzed the spread of the virus from 22 January 2020 to 15 September 2020 and used Little’s Law to predict a country’s ability to control the epidemic. According to the average recovery time curve changes, 16 countries are divided into different categories—Outbreak, Under Control, Second Wave of Outbreak, and Premature Lockdown Lift. The curves of outbreak countries (i.e., U.S., Spain, Netherlands, Serbia, France, Sweden, and Belgium) showed an upward trend representing that their medical systems have been overloaded and are unable to provide effective medical services to patients. On the other hand, after the pandemic-prevention policy was applied, the average recovery time dropped in under control countries (i.e., Iceland, New Zealand, Taiwan, Thailand, and Singapore). Finally, we study the impact of interventions on the average recovery time in some of the countries. The interventions, e.g., lockdown and gathering restrictions, show the effect after 14 days, which is the same as the incubation period of COVID-19. The results show that the average recovery time (T) can be used as an indicator of the ability to control the pandemic.

COVID-19 Pandemic Analysis for a Country’s Ability to Outbreak Control using Little’s Law: Infodemiology Approach (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Since the outbreak of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), a country’s ability to control the epidemic depends on how well its health system accommodates COVID-19 patients. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to assess the ability of different countries to contain the COVID-19 epidemic in real-time with the number of confirmed, death and recovered cases. METHODS Using the dataset provided by the Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX), we compared the data from 16 countries between 2020/01/22 to 2020/09/15. We analyze the spreading of the virus using Little’s Law to predict a country’s ability for epidemic control. RESULTS According to the changes in the average recovery time curve, 16 countries are divided into different cases – Outbreak, Under Control, Second Wave of Outbreak, and Premature Lockdown Lift. Analyzing the dataset with Little’s Law, the curves of some countries (i.e., U.S., Spain, Netherlands, Serbia, France, Sweden, and Belgium) showed an upward trend representing their medical systems in these countries have been overloaded and unable to provide effective medical services to patients, i.e., those countries have lost control (i.e., Outbreak case) of COVID-19. On the other hand, after the pandemic-prevention policy was applied in some countries (i.e., Iceland, New Zealand, Taiwan, Thailand, and Singapore), the average recovery time dropped with the number of new cases decreased (i.e., Under Control case). The prevention policy, e.g., lockdown and gathering restrictions, shows the effect after 14 days, which is the same as the incubation period of COVID-19. The result shows that the average recovery time (T) can be used as an indicator of the ability of a country on controlling the pandemic. CONCLUSIONS In this paper, we use Little’s Law to estimate the capacity of each country’s healthcare system for the COVID-19 pandemic and find out a new estimator to represent the severity of the pandemic. We study the impact of interventions on the average recovery time in some countries. The result shows that the average recovery time (T) can be used as an indicator of the ability on controlling the pandemic.