ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is first to establish a general prediction framework for turning (period) term structures in COVID-19 epidemic related to the implementation of emergency risk management in the practice, which allows us to conduct the reliable estimation for the peak period based on the new concept of “Turning Period” (instead of the traditional one with the focus on “Turning Point”) for infectious disease spreading such as the COVID-19 epidemic appeared early in year 2020. By a fact that emergency risk management is necessarily to implement emergency plans quickly, the identification of the Turning Period is a key element to emergency planning as it needs to provide a time line for effective actions and solutions to combat a pandemic by reducing as much unexpected risk as soon as possible. As applications, the paper also discusses how this “Turning Term (Period) Structure” is used to predict the peak phase for COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan from January/2020 to early March/2020. Our study shows that the predication framework established in this paper is capable to provide the trajectory of COVID-19 cases dynamics for a few weeks starting from Feb.10/2020 to early March/2020, from which we successfully predicted that the turning period of COVID-19 epidemic in Wuhan would arrive within one week after Feb.14/2020, as verified by the true observation in the practice. The method established in this paper for the prediction of “Turning Term (Period) Structures” by applying COVID-19 epidemic in China happened early 2020 seems timely and accurate, providing adequate time for the government, hospitals, essential industry sectors and services to meet peak demands and to prepare aftermath planning, and associated criteria for the Turning Term Structure of COVID-19 epidemic is expected to be a useful and powerful tool to implement the so-called “dynamic zero-COVID-19 policy” ongoing basis in the practice. © 2022, Science Press (China). All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
This study aims to develop a general framework for predicting the duration of the Turning Period (or Turning Phase) for the COVID-19 outbreak in China that started in late December 2019 from Wuhan. A new concept called the Term Structure for Turning Period (instead of Turning Point) is used for this study, and the framework, implemented into an individual SEIR (iSEIR) model, has enabled a timely prediction of the turning period when applied to Wuhan's COVID-19 epidemic, and provided the opportunity for relevant authorities to take appropriate and timely actions to successfully control the epidemic. By using the observed daily COVID-19 cases in Wuhan from January 23, 2020 to February 6 (and February 10), 2020 as inputs to the framework it allowed us to generate the trajectory of COVID-19 dynamics and to predict that the Turning Period of COVID-19 outbreak in Wuhan would arrive within one week after February 14. This prediction turned out to be timely and accurate, which has provided adequate time for the government, hospitals and related sectors and services to meet peak demand and to prepare aftermath planning. We want to emphasize that emergency risk management entails the implementation of an emergency plan, where timing the Turning Period is key to express a clear timeline for effective actions. Our study confirms the observed effectiveness of Wuhan's Lockdown and Isolation control program imposed since January 23, 2020 to the middle of March, 2020 and resulted in swiftly flattened epidemic curve, and Wuhan's success offers an exemplary lesson for the world to learn in combating COVID-19 pandemic.