The Uncertain COVID-19 Spread Pattern in India: A Statistical Analysis of the Current Situation

Abstract

There are standard techniques of forecasting the spread of pandemics. Uncertainty however is always associated with such forecasts. In this article, we are going to discuss the uncertain situation currently prevailing in the COVID-19 spread in India. For statistical analysis, we have considered the total number of cases for 60 consecutive days, from June 23 to August 21. We have seen that instead of taking data of all 60 days together, a better picture of uncertainty can be observed if we consider the data separately in three equal parts from June 23 to July 12, from July 13 to August 1, and from August 2 to August 21. For that we would first need to ascertain that the current spread pattern in India is almost exponential. Thereafter we shall show that the data regarding the total number of cases in India are not really behaving in an expected way, making forecasting the time to peak very difficult. We have found that the pandemic would perhaps change its pattern of growth from nearly exponential to nearly logarithmic, which we have earlier observed in the case of Italy, in less than 78 days starting from August 2.