Abstract
This study seeks to determine an appropriate statistical technique for forecasting the cumulated confirm cases of Coronavirus in Ghana. Cumulated daily data spanning from March 12, 2020, to August 04, 2020, was retrieved from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Four statistical forecasting techniques: Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average, Artificial Neural Network, Exponential smoothing and Autoregressive Fractional Integrated Moving Average were fitted to the COVID-19 series. Their respective forecast accuracy measures were compared to select the appropriate technique for forecasting the COVID-19 cases. Our findings revealed that the ARFIMA technique was a suitable statistical model for predicting COVID-19 cases in Ghana. The "best" model for forecasting is ARFIMA (2, 0.49, 4) which passed all the needed diagnostic tests. An unequal weight was estimated to derive a combined model for all four forecasting techniques. A 149-cumulated daily forecast from the "best" model and the combined model revealed that the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases would increase slightly until the end of this year.
Highlights
The occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic has given the 21st-century generation a feel of the Spanish flu in 1918
The various methods' predictive performance was used in selecting the "best" way for forecasting COVID-19 cases in Ghana
With the "differencing" information acquired at the test of stationarity in Table 2, the Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips & Perron (PP) tests suggest a different order of "1" whiles the Kwiatkowski Phillips Schmidt and Shin (KPSS) test means a differencing order of "2"
Summary
The occurrence of the COVID-19 pandemic has given the 21st-century generation a feel of the Spanish flu in 1918. According to the WHO [1] situation report, SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) belong to β-coronavirus, which is a typical RNA-virus and can spread from personto-person [2]. According to Fernandes [3], the COVID-19 outbreak has caused serious global socio-economic turmoil. As of August 7 2020, about 21.88 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 had been recorded in a total of about 215 countries with more than 773,926 deaths and 14.6 million recoveries [4, 5]. The Africa subregion constitutes 5.14% of the global confirmed cases, 3.32 % of deaths and 5.75 % of the recovery's cases [4, 5]. The confirmed cases in Ghana stands at 42,653 with 239 deaths and 40,567 recoveries cases as of August 7 2020. Many countries, including Ghana, have responded by implementing self-isolation measures, social distancing, and wearing the mask to prevent further spread [6]
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