Time Series Analysis on Covid-19 Cases in Malaysia and Thailand

Abstract

The 2019 Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19), also known as the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is a highly contagious illness. The first Malaysia COVID-19 case was discovered on January 25, 2020, while Thailand reported their first confirmed case on January 13, 2020. In this research, the main objectives are to identify and forecast the trend of COVID-19 confirmed cases and death cases in Malaysia and Thailand by using the simple exponential smoothing method and Holt’s linear trend method. This research used 365 data of daily COVID-19 confirmed cases and death cases for Malaysia and Thailand. The results showed that Thailand recorded a higher accuracy with MAPE value of 10.41% in terms of daily confirmed cases by using a simple exponential smoothing method and the same findings applied to daily death cases, with Thailand accounted for 25.89% of MAPE. Meanwhile, by using Holt's linear trend method, Thailand achieved a higher accuracy of MAPE (16.77%) in terms of daily confirmed cases and the same conclusions held true for daily death cases, with Thailand accounting for 25.00% of MAPE. However, the simple exponential smoothing method outperformed Holt's linear trend method when forecasting daily confirmed cases, while Holt's linear trend method outperformed it when forecasting daily death cases.