Accuracy of COVID-19 propagation forecast in Colombia Precisión del pronóstico de la propagación del COVID-19 en Colombia

Abstract

Introduction: the new Coronavirus (COVID-19) has been declared by the World Health Organization as a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC). Cases have been reported on all continents. The first case was confirmed in Colombia on March 6 2020. Objective: to present the accuracy of a forecast of the dynamics of COVID-19 in Colombia. Methodology: the database including people infected with Covid-19 was used to develop the research. This information corresponds to the period between March 6 and April 14 2020.  The Brown´s model method was used for the predictive analysis in the SPSS v.25 statistical package. Results: it was observed that the prediction error value was very low and corresponds to a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) of 0.03%, followed by a mean absolute deviation (MAE) of 0.95, hence, in both cases the quality of prediction had a high degree of reliability. Conclusions: in the last decades, the use of mathematical models has been developed at a representative degree, providing a major impetus for illustrating effective scenarios of infectious disease prevention and control.