Prediction of COVID-19 cases using SIR and AR models: Tokyo-specific and nationwide application

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With fast infectious diseases such as COVID-19, the SIR model may not represent the number of infections due to the occurrence of distribution shifts. In this study, we use simulations based on the SIR model to verify the prediction accuracy of new positive cases by considering distribution shifts. Instead of expressing the overall number of new positive cases in the SIR model, the number of new positive cases in a specific region is simulated, the expanded estimation ratio is expressed in the AR model, and these are multiplied to predict the overall number. In addition to the parameters used in the SIR model, we introduced parameters related to social variables. The parameters for the simulation were estimated daily from the data using approximate Bayesian computation (ABC). Using this method, the average absolute percent error in predicting the number of positive cases for the peak of the eighth wave (2022/12/22–12/28) for all of Japan was found to be 62.2% when using data up to two months before the peak and 6.2% when using data up to one month before the peak. Our simulations based on the SIR model reproduced the number of new positive cases across Japan and produced reasonable results when predicting the peak of the eighth wave.