ABSTRACT
The recent outbreak of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) has infected millions of citizens worldwide and claimed many lives. This paper examines the impact of COVID-19 on Chinese e-commerce by analyzing behavioral changes observed on a large online shopping platform. We first conduct a time series analysis to identify product categories that faced the most extensive disruptions. The time-lagged analysis shows that behavioral patterns of shopping actions are highly responsive to the epidemic's development. Based on these findings, we present a consumer demand prediction method by encompassing the epidemic statistics and behavioral features of COVID-19-related products. Experimental results demonstrate that our predictions outperform existing baselines and further extend to long-term and province-level forecasts. Finally, we discuss how our market analysis and prediction can help better prepare for future pandemics by gaining extra time to launch preventive measures.
ABSTRACT
The last two decades have witnessed two large-scale pandemics caused by coronaviruses, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS). At the end of 2019, another novel coronavirus, designated as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), hit Wuhan, a city in the center of China, and subsequently spread rapidly to the whole world. Latest reports revealed that more than 800 thousand people in over 200 countries are involved in the epidemic disease by SARS-CoV-2. Due to the high mortality rate and the lack of optimum therapeutics, it is crucial to understand the biological characteristics of the virus and its possible pathogenesis to respond to the SARS-CoV-2. Rapid diagnostics and effective therapeutics are also important interventions for the management of infection control. However, the rapid evolution of SARS-CoV-2 exerted tremendous challenges on its diagnostics and therapeutics. Therefore, there is an urgent need to summarize the existing research results to guide decision-making on the prioritization of resources for research and development. In this review, we focus on our current understanding of epidemiology, pathogenesis, diagnostics and therapeutics of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).