Forecasting and planning during a pandemic: COVID-19 growth rates, supply chain disruptions, and governmental decisions

Abstract

Highlights We provide predictive analytics tools for immediate use during COVID-19. We use data from the UK, USA, India, Germany, Singapore up to mid-April 2020. We forecast COVID-19 growth rates at country-level. We use auxiliary data (Google trends) to model excess demand. We forecast the excess demand for products and services at country-level.

Challenge of forecasting demand of medical resources and supplies during a pandemic: A comparative evaluation of three surge calculators for COVID-19

“…In other words, policymakers can use these calculators interconnected with each other based on the available data for each country to understand the pandemic from all its angles to be able to generate policymaking frameworks. This urges the need for a clear methodology that allows policymakers to decide which model is more applicable or adaptable for their context [ 20 ] and underscores the necessity of enabling calculators to be adopted to local policies and behaviours beyond social distancing. Although gaps in the present data streams provide a challenge for the current epidemic forecasting, recent breakthroughs in this field afford the possibility for refining future predictive models [ 41 ].…”

The Challenge of Forecasting Demand of Medical Resources and Supplies During a Pandemic: A Comparative Evaluation of Three Surge Calculators for COVID-19

“…Despite the efficacy of forecasting in the better planning ahead and reducing the impact of the infectious disease outbreaks including healthcare capacity, deaths, and the economic burden experienced, comparing forecasts at the national level remains challenging 17,29,30 . The latter can potentially limit the development and use of forecasting 17 .…”

“…So far, the efforts to accurately model any emerging outbreak's trajectory for the upcoming days are limited due to variabilities in assumptions and parameters including social distancing [14][15][16] . Accordingly, the use of a single forecasting model may not precisely predict how the pandemic evolves 17 .…”

Implications of government subsidy on the vaccine product R&D when the buyer is risk averse

“…The supply chain risks that decision makers need to face are widespread ( Hamdan and Diabat, 2020 , Choi et al, 2019 , Xie et al, 2020 , Zhao et al, 2020 ). As the epidemic outbreak may cause the supply chain risk, some studies focus on the impacts of the epidemic outbreaks on the supply chain based on the case of COVID-19 ( Ivanov, 2020 , Govindan et al, 2020 , Nikolopoulos et al, 2021 ). Recently, Duijzer et al (2018) review the existing studies on the vaccine supply chain and indicate the importance and existence of supply and demand uncertainty on the vaccine production.…”