SEIR and Regression Model based COVID-19

outbreak predictions in India

Gaurav Pandeya, Poonam Chaudharya, Rajan Guptab, Saibal Palc
a
Department of CSE & IT, The NorthCap University, India
b
DeenDayalUpadhyaya College, University of Delhi, India
c
Defence Research & Development Organization, India
a
{Email: [email protected]}

Abstract
COVID-19 pandemic has become a major threat to the country. Till date,
well tested medication or antidote is not available to cure this disease.
According to WHO reports, COVID-19 is a severe acute respiratory
syndrome which is transmitted through respiratory droplets and contact
routes. Analysis of this disease requires major attention by the Government
to take necessary steps in reducing the effect of this global pandemic. In this
study, outbreak of this disease has been analysed for India till 30th March
2020 and predictions have been made for the number of cases for the next 2
weeks. SEIR model and Regression model have been used for predictions
based on the data collected from John Hopkins University repository in the
time period of 30th January 2020 to 30th March 2020. The performance of
the models was evaluated using RMSLE and achieved 1.52 for SEIR model
and 1.75 for the regression model. The RMSLE error rate between SEIR
model and Regression model was found to be 2.01. Also, the value of R0
which is the spread of the disease was calculated to be 2.02. Expected cases
may rise between 5000-6000 in the next two weeks of time. This study will
help the Government and doctors in preparing their plans for the next two
weeks. Based on the predictions for short-term interval, these models can be
tuned for forecasting in long-term intervals.
Key-terms: COVID-19, Corona Virus, India, Spread Exposed Infected
Recovered model, Regression Model, Machine Learning, Predictions,
Forecasting

1. Introduction
The COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic is a major global health threat.
The Novel COVID-19 has been reported as the most detrimental respiratory
virus since 1918 H1N1 influenza pandemic. According to the World Health
Organization (WHO) COVID-19 situation report [1] as on March 27, 2020,
a total of 509,164 confirmed cases and 23,335 deaths have been reported
across the world. Global spread has been rapid, with 170 countries now
having reported at least one case. Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is
an infectious disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome
coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Corona virus belongs to a family of viruses
which is responsible for illness ranging from common cold to deadly
diseases as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) which were first discovered in China [2002]
and Saudi Arabia [2012].
The 2019-novel Coronavirus or better known as COVID-19 was reported in
Wuhan, China for the very first time on 31st December 2019. According to
Jiang et al. [3] the fatality rate for this virus has been estimated to be 4.5%
but for the age group 70-79 this has gone up to 8.0% while for those >80 it
has been noted to be 14.8%. This has led to elderly persons above the age of
50 with underlying diseases like diabetes, Parkinson’s disease and
cardiovascular disease to be considered at the highest risk. Symptoms for
this disease can take 2-14 days to appear and can range from fever, cough,
shortness of breath to pneumonia, kidney failure and even death [1]. The
Pandey et al.

transmission is person to person via respiratory droplets among close

contact with the average number of people infected by a patient being 1.5 -
3.5 but the virus is not considered airborne [2].
There exist a large number of evidences where machine learning algorithms
have proven to give efficient predictions in healthcare [4-6]. Nsoesie et al.
[7] has provided a systematic review of approaches used to forecast the
dynamics of influenza pandemic. They have reviewed research papers based
on deterministic mass action models, regression models, prediction rules,
Bayesian network, SEIR model, ARIMA forecasting model etc. Recent
studies on COVID-19 include only exploratory analysis of the available
limited data [8-10].
Effective and well-tested vaccine against CoVID-19 has not been invented
and hence a key part in managing this pandemic is to decrease the epidemic
peak, also known as flattening the epidemic curve. The role of data
scientists and data mining researchers is to integrate the related data and
technology to better understand the virus and its characteristics, which can
help in taking right decisions and concrete plan of actions. It will lead to a
bigger picture in taking aggressive measures in developing infrastructure,
facilities, vaccines and restraining similar epidemics in future. The
objectives of the current study are as follows.
1. Finding the rate of spread of the disease in India.
2. Developing a mathematical SEIR (Susceptible, Exposed,
Infectious, Recovered) model to evaluate the spread of disease.
3. Prediction of COVID-19 outbreak using SEIR and Regression
models.
After presenting background in Section I, Section II presents the
methodology about the model used in this study. Section III covers analysis,
experimental results and performance evaluation. Discussion has been
provided in section IV followed by conclusion in section V.

2. Methodology
Time series data provided by John Hopkins University, USA has been used
for the empirical result analysis [12]. The time period of data is from
30/01/2020 to 30/03/2020. The data includes confirmed cases, death cases
and recovered cases of all countries. However, this paper focuses only on
India’s data for analysis and prediction of COVID-19 confirmed patients.
The fact that India covers approximately 17.7% of the world’s population
and till date the effect of COVID-19 cases per million is less than 1, is the
motivation behind this research. For analysis and prediction of number of
COVID-19 patients in India, the following models have been used.
2.1 SEIR Model
Mathematical models can be designed to stimulate the effect of disease
within many levels. These models can be used to evaluate disease from
within the host model i.e. influence interaction within the cells of the host to
metapopulation model i.e. how its spread in geographically separated
populations. The most important part of this model is to calculate the R0
value. The value of R tells about the contagiousness of disease. It is the
0

fundamental goal of epidemiologists studying a new case. In simple terms

R determines an average of what number of people can be affected by a
0

single infected person over a course of time. If the value of R < 1, this
0

signifies the spread is expected to stop. If the value of R = 1, this signifies

0

the spread is stable or endemic. If the value of R >, 1 this signifies the
0

spread in increasing in the absence of intervention as shown in Figure 1.

Equation (1) calculates the percentage of the population needed to be
vaccinated to stabilize the spread of disease.

𝐺𝑜𝑎𝑙 R0
𝑃𝑜𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑟𝑒𝑞𝑢𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑠 𝑣𝑎𝑐𝑐𝑖𝑛𝑒 = 1 − × 𝑃𝑜𝑝𝑢𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 (1)
Current R0

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Pandey et al.

The R value of COVID-19 for India that has been calculated based on
0

earlier data is reported in the range 1.5 – 4 [11]. Assuming the goal of R to 0

be 0.5, the lower limit of the population required for the vaccine is 919.7
million and the upper limit would be 1.2071 billion. This remains a very
vague figure so calculating the value of R remains an important part.
0

Figure 1. Demonstration of spread of disease on the basis of R0 value

The SEIR model has mainly four components, viz. Susceptible (S), Exposed
(E), Infected (I) and Recovered (R) as shown in Figure 2. S is the fraction of
susceptible individuals (those able to contract the disease), E is the fraction
of exposed individuals (those who have been infected but are not yet
infectious), I is the fraction of infective individuals (those capable of
transmitting the disease) and R is the fraction of recovered individuals
(those who have become immune).

Figure 2. Illustration of SEIR model and its four components

In figure 2, 𝜷is the infectious rate which represents the probability of

disease transmitting to susceptible person from an infectious person;𝝈is
incubation rate which represents latent rate at which a person becomes
1
infectious;𝜸 is the recovery rate which is determined by (where D is
𝐷
duration of infection); and 𝝃is the rate at which recovered people become
susceptible due to low immunity or other health related issues. The ordinary
differential equations (ODEs) for all these four parameters are shown in
equations 2 to 5.

𝑑𝑆 𝛽𝑆𝐼
= − + 𝜉𝑅 (2)
𝑑𝑡 𝑁

𝑑𝐸 𝛽𝑆𝐼
= − – 𝜎𝐸 (3)
𝑑𝑡 𝑁

𝑑𝐼
= 𝜎𝐸 − 𝛾𝐼 (4)
𝑑𝑡

𝑑𝑅
= 𝛾𝐼 − 𝜉𝑅 (5)
𝑑𝑡

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Pandey et al.

Here, N = S + E + I + R is the total the population. Now, we can calculate

the value of R using the formula in Equation 6. The value of α, μ,𝛽,𝛾 can be
0

calculated using the ordinary deferential equations from the 4 component of

the SEIR model.

𝛽0 𝛼
𝑅0 = (𝜇+ 𝛼) (𝜇+ 𝛾)
(6)

To describe the spread of COVID-19 using SEIR model, few consideration

and assumptions were made due to limited availability of the data. They are
enlisted as follows.

1. Number of births and deaths remain same

2. 1/𝛼 is latent period of disease &1/ 𝛾 is infectious period
3. Recovered person was not sick again during the calculation period

Now, considering 70% of India’s population to be approximately 966

million in susceptible class (S) and assuming only 1 person got infected in
the initial part with average incubation period of 5.2, average infectious
period of 2.9 and R0 equal to 4, the SEIR model without intervention is
shown in Figure 3 with the assumptions mentioned above. In Figure 3, we
can examine that the number of susceptible population decreases by 80% in
first 100 days as per the listed assumptions. The algorithm for SEIR model
is shown as follows.

Algorithm for SEIR Model

Input: Time Frame(T), Population(N), Number of infected cases(N_inf), Average
incubation period(T_inc), Average Infectious period(T_inf), Reproduction
number(R0), best decay function for R0(Rt)
Output: S_out, E_out, I_out, R_out
1. S = (N – N_inf) / N
2. E = 0
3. I = N_inf / N
4. R = 0
5. For t < T do:
𝑑𝑆
6. S_out =
𝑑𝑡
(S, I, Rt, T_inf)
𝑑𝐸
7. E_out =
𝑑𝑡
(S, E, I, Rt, T_inf, T_inc)
𝑑𝐼
8. I_out =
𝑑𝑡
(I, E, T_inc, T_inf)
𝑑𝑅
9. R_out =
𝑑𝑡
(I, T_inf)
10. Return [S_out, E_out, I_out, R_out]

Figure 3. SEIR Model using R0 equal 4 and S to be 70% of India’s population

SEIR and Regression Model based COVID-19 outbreak predictions in India 4

Pandey et al.

2.2 Regression Model

Regression models are statistical sets of processes which are used to
estimate or predict the target or dependent variable on the basis of
dependent variables. The regression model has many variants like linear
regression, ridge regression, stepwise regression, polynomial regression etc.
This study has used linear regression and polynomial regression for
prediction of COVID-19 cases. Linear regression is a simple model which is
used to finds the relation between a dependent and an independent variable.
It uses the value of intercept and slope to predict the output variable.
Equation 7 shows the relationship between a dependent and independent
variable in a linear regression model. In Equation 7,𝜷𝟎 and 𝜷𝟏 are two
independent variables which represent intercept and slope respectively and
𝝐 is the error rate. This creates a straight line and is mostly used for
predictive analysis. To make the linear regression algorithm more accurate
we try to minimize the sum of residual square between the predicted and
actual value.

𝑌 = 𝛽0 + 𝛽1 𝑥 + 𝜖 (7)

Polynomial regression is a special type of regression which works on the

curvilinear relationship between the dependent values and independent
values. Equation 8 shows the relationship between a dependent and
independent variable in polynomial regression. In Equation 8, x is the
independent variable and 𝜽𝟎 is the bias also the intercept and 𝜽𝟏 , 𝜽𝟐 , ……,
𝜽𝒏 are the weight or partial coefficients assigned to the predictors and n is
the degree of polynomial.

𝑌 = 𝜃0 + 𝜃1 𝑥 + 𝜃2 𝑥 2 + 𝜃3 𝑥 3 + 𝜃𝑛 𝑥 𝑛 (8)

The polynomial regression used in the study includes transformation of data

into polynomials and applying linear regression to fit the parameter. A
polynomial regression with degree equal to 1 is a linear regression.
Choosing the value of a degree is a challenging task. If the degree of
polynomial is less, it will not be able to fit the model properly and if the
value of degree of polynomial is greater than actual, it will overfit the
training data.

3. Results
In India, the first case of COVID-19 was reported on 30th January 2020.
During the month of February, the number of cases reported was 3 and
remained constant during the entire month. The major rise in the spread of
disease started in the month of March’20. Figures 4 and 5 show the change
in confirmed cases and death cases from 22nd Jan 2020 to 30th Mar 2020.
Data from March shows a significant change in spread of the disease.

Figure 4. Change in number of confirmed cases due to COVID-19 in India

SEIR and Regression Model based COVID-19 outbreak predictions in India 5

Pandey et al.

Figure 5. Change in number of death cases due to COVID-19 in India

In thecurrent analysis, we have used data till 25 March 2020 as our training
th

data and data from 25 March 2020 - 30 March 2020 as the test/evaluation
th th

data. Before applying the prediction model we analysed the time series
training data to check whether the model can fit the data or not. Figure 6
shows the result of confirmed cases in the log10 base versus last 15 days of
training data. The reason of using last 15 days of training data is because it
shows major growth in confirmed cases as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 6. Show the linear growth trend in India between 49 and 65 days

Then we trained our data with SEIR model and result of line of fitting is
shown in Figure 7. While applying SEIR, we took care of some
interventions like quarantine and lockdown announced by the Government
of India during this period so, we applied a decay function to lower the
number of confirmed cases during prediction. We used hill decay in our
model which is a half decay and its formula is given in Equation 9, where L
is a description of the rate of decay, T is time and k is a shape parameter (no
dimension). Half decay functions never reach zero and have half their
original efficacies at time L.

ℎ𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑑𝑒𝑐𝑎𝑦 𝑓𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 = 1/(1 + (𝑇/𝐿)𝑘 ) (9)

SEIR and Regression Model based COVID-19 outbreak predictions in India 6

Pandey et al.

Figure 7 Analysis using SEIR model, Blue dots are value from training data and
yellow line is the model fitting line

For India region, from the training data the value of beta was computed
equal to 0.6206 and value of gamma equal to 0.5106. Now using Equation
2-6 we calculated the value of spread of disease or R as equal to2.02.
0

Since we know COVID-19 is contagious and rate of transferring the disease

from an infected person to susceptible person is 2.02 we need to predict the
amount at which the disease can grow. Table 1 shows the prediction result
using two models. In both the models, we have used 25 days training data as
there was no significant trend in India before March 2020. To check the
performance of the models used in this study we used root mean squared log
error (RMSLE) and value RMSLE for the SEIR model was 1.52 and 1.75
for the regression model. The RMSLE error rate between SEIR model and
Regression model was found to be 2.01.

Table 1.Prediction of number of COVID-19 patients in India for next two weeks
using SEIR and regression model

Date SEIR MODEL Regression Model

25/03/20 648 604
26/03/20 720 740
27/03/20 874 820
28/03/20 974 923
29/03/20 1081 1040
30/03/20 1199 1172
31/03/20 1333 1321
01/04/20 1485 1488
02/04/20 1654 1676
03/04/20 1837 1887
04/04/20 2038 2127
05/04/20 2264 2396
06/04/20 2520 2669
07/04/20 2807 3007
08/04/20 3122 3386
09/04/20 3465 3814
10/04/20 3847 4296
11/04/20 4279 4838
12/04/20 4763 5448
13/04/20 5300 6135

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Pandey et al.

Figure 8. Day-wise prediction using Regression [Blue], SEIR model [Red] and
actual [Yellow] values. Actual values are recorded till 30/03/2020

4. Discussion
The current trend shows that there will be a linear trend continued in the
next few days as the control mechanisms taken by the Government of India
are fairly strict and working well for the time being. Also, with linear trends,
the patients getting recovered can be managed easily and death rate can be
controlled as well. The findings of the current study may explode
exponentially as shown by Gupta and Pal [13] if stringent control measures
are not taken by the Government. Hospital provisions and medical facility
enhancement work should be continued at a very rapid pace to prepare the
country for exponential growth, if it occurs. However, with current
interventions and preparations, the Government of India is looking forward
to flatten the curve.
During the prediction of the confirmed cases as shown in Table 1, there
were few challenges associated with the data. The data was not stationary
and showed an exponential growth after 40 days from 22 Jan 2020 as
nd

shown in Figure 4. Overfitting remains a major problem with disease spread

time series data. In this model, we have addressed the overfitting problem
using decay based intervention. Another problem faced in this study was
shortage of training data. Data for 25 days was used for training purpose and
5 days data for validation, based on which the number of confirmed cases
for next 14 days was predicted. The training data is very less for any
machine learning to train itself . Also, rapid changes in number of infected
cases occurred in mid-March. The SEIR model shows an advantage as it
does not grow exponentially with time but also uses some intervention
methods with time. For intervention, a hill decay model was used. In the
case of a regression model, different features can be used for decaying or
intervention eg. the number of cases recovered etc., but growth of the
regression line still remains a problem. For a regression model, we always
need to train the model after some time with the change in trend in the data.
The SEIR model also uses some assumptions like the number of people in
susceptible class, for which we have taken 70% of the population to
susceptible class.
In this study, we have only predicted the number of confirmed cases. To
predict the number of death cases we faced many problems of data
stationarity. Also, with limited data, the model was not able to predict the
number of death cases properly. We have used only time series data for
confirmed cases and death cases in this study. Using other data related to
weather, geographic layout of the country, state-level population and
governance parameters, the model prediction rate can be further improved.

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Pandey et al.

5. Conclusion
In this study, two machine learning models SEIR and Regression were used
to analyse and predict the change in spread of COVID-19 disease. We have
analysed the data and found out that the number of cases per million in India
is less than 0.5 till 30 March 2020. Then, with the help of the SEIR model
th

the value of R was computed to be 2.02. Also, we predicted the number of

0

confirmed cases of COVID-19 for the next 14 days starting from 31 March st

2020 – 13 April 2020. During performance evaluation, our model

th

computed the value of RMSLE for the SEIR model to be 1.52 and 1.75 for
the regression model. Also, the value of spread of disease of R0 was found
to be 2.02.
The result obtained from this study is taken from training data up to 30th
March 2020. Further, looking at the trend, there is definitely going to be an
increase in the number of cases. Doctors, health workers and people
involved in providing essential services have to be protected in accordance
with prescribed medical norms. Community spreading in the future due to
carelessness of individuals as well as groups can exponentially increase the
number of cases. The peak is yet to come, hence the Government has to be
extra vigil and enforce strict measures. In addition, provision of medical
facilities across the country has to be aggressively enhanced.
In future, an automated algorithm can be developed to fetch data in regular
intervals and automatically predict the number of cases for weekly and bi-
weekly data. In this way, Government and hospital facilities can also
maintain a check on the supply and medical assistance / isolation required
for new patients.

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