CNN-LSTM deep learning based forecasting model for COVID-19 infection cases in Nigeria, South Africa and Botswana.

Abstract

COVID-19 pandemic has indeed plunged the global community especially African countries into an alarming difficult situationculminating into a great deal amounts of catastrophes such as economic recession, political instability and loss of jobs. Thepandemic spreads exponentially and causes loss of lives. Following the outbreak of the omicron new variant of concern,forecasting and identification of the COVID-19 infection cases is very vital for government at various levels. Hence, havingknowledge of the spread at a particular point in time, swift actions can be taken by government at various levels with a view toaccordingly formulate new policies and modalities towards minimizing the trajectory of the consequences of COVID-19 pandemicto both public health and economic sectors. Here, a potent combination of Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) learning algorithm along with Long Short Term Memory(LSTM) learning algorithm has been proposed in this work in order to produce a hybrid of a deep learning algorithm ConvolutionalNeural Network - Long Short Term Memory (CNN-LSTM) for forecasting COVID-19 infection cases particularly in Nigeria, SouthAfrica and Botswana. Forecasting models for COVID-19 infection cases in Nigeria, South Africa and Botswana, were developedfor 10 days using deep learning-based approaches namely CNN, LSTM and CNN-LSTM deep learning algorithm respectively. The models were evaluated on the basis of four standard performance evaluation metrics which include accuracy, MSE, MAEand RMSE respectively. However, the CNN-LSTM deep learning-based forecasting model achieved the best accuracy of98.30%, 97.60%, and 97.74% for Nigeria, South Africa and Botswana respectively; and in the same manner, achieved lesserMSE, MAE and RMSE values compared to models developed with CNN and LSTM respectively. Taken together, the CNN-LSTM deep learning-based forecasting model for COVID-19 infection cases in Nigeria, South Africaand Botswana dramatically surpasses the two other DL based forecasting models (CNN and LSTM) for COVID-19 infectioncases in Nigeria, South Africa and Botswana in terms of not only the best accuracy of with 98.30%, 97.60%, and 97.74% but alsoin terms of lesser MSE, MAE and RMSE.