Coronavirus pandemic to end in India by May end
New Delhi : One day after the Centre claimed that there will be no new case of coronavirus in India if the lockdown gets extended till May 16, the researchers at Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) have mentioned that coronavirus pandemic will end soon in most of the countries across the world, including India.
“By around May 21, COVID-19 will end 97% in India”, the SUTD predicted through mathematical modeling. According to the university’s website calculating the data-driven estimates, the SIR (susceptible-infected-recovered) model is regressed based on the data from different countries to estimate the key dates of transition during the pandemic life cycle curve across the globe.
The model uses data from Our World in Data and code from Milan Batista and applies the SIR Model for Spread of Disease – The Differential Equation Model.
Meanwhile, the university website has mentioned that the predictions change daily on the basis of new data and it is for the use of study and research purpose only.
How accurate are these predictions?
“Mathematical models of how infections spread are simplified versions of reality. They are designed to mimic the main features of real-world disease spread well enough to make predictions which can, at least partly, be trusted enough to make decisions,” says Lester Caudill, Professor of Mathematics, University of Richmond.
But in the case of COVID-19, there is so much we are yet to know about the real world feature of the disease spread, as this is the first time we are faced with the disease.
“What are all the different ways it can be transferred between people? How long does it live on door knobs or Amazon boxes? How much time passes from the moment the virus enters a person’s body until that person is able to transmit it to someone else? These, and many other questions, are important to incorporate into a reliable model of COVID-19 infections. Yet people simply do not know the answers yet,” says Professor Caudill.
