Indo-Pak Comparison and Forecasting of Covid-19 Epidemic: A Secondary Data Analysis

Abstract

Background: The world has historically faced and recovered from many pandemics. The most recent global pandemic that the whole world is facing is Novel Coronavirus – Covid-19. The objective of current study is to compare and forecast COVID-19 trends for Pakistan and India. Methods: The data set for this research is obtained from the World Health Organization (WHO) online repository (https://covid19.who.int/). The time period we have considered since the first corona related case and death were observed in both countries. This research paper analyzes corona related cases and deaths in Pakistan and India till 28th February 2021, a total of 578,797 cases in Pakistan and 11,096,731 cases in India has been confirmed including 128,37 and 1,570,51 deaths respectively. The Auto-Regressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) model is used to forecast the variables cumulative cases and deaths. It is simple to use and more predictive than any other regression model. Results: Based on the current trend, the forecast graph reveals that the number of cumulative corona cases could reach 999,767 in Pakistan and 16,481,122 in India up to 31st December 2021. Conclusion: This research found that corona related cumulative cases and deaths are on the rise in both countries. The pandemic situation in India is worse than in Pakistan nevertheless both countries are at high risk. There is a sudden increasing pattern in the number of corona related cases in both countries. Both governments must impose effective policies to control this pandemic.