Analyzing and Predicting Coronavirus
Infections Using Machine Learning Algorithms
Abstract—Since December 2019, the novel coronavirus
(COVID-19) has caused over 2M deaths with more than 100
million people being infected worldwide and the numbers
are increasing day by day. Bangladesh, being one of the most
densely populated country in the world, is now under
community transmission of the COVID-19 outbreak. This
has created huge health, social, and economic burdens for
this small country. Bangladesh has reported over 250,000
infected cases and 3000 deaths till 7th August, 2020. To
prevent further loss, prediction of future consequences is
crucial. Previous studies manifest that machine learning
(ML) algorithms work better in providing precise
information regarding COVID-19. This knowledge helps
enabling the decision-makers to make certain decisions
accordingly. In this study, we examine several machine
learning regression algorithms to find out the one that can
make estimations for predicting future cases for
overpopulated countries like Bangladesh. Based on this
result, the government as well as policymakers can make a
decision about the lockdown, resource mobilization, socio-
economic progress, education of children and many more.
Keywords- COVID-19, Coronavirus, Machine Learning,
Time-series Analysis, Data Analysis, Data Regression
I. INTRODUCTION
Corona viruses hail from a large family of viruses
known to cause illnesses like the common cold to more
severe diseases such as Middle East Respiratory Syndrome
(MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS).
These two diseases are spread by the corona viruses named
as MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV. SARS was first seen in
2002 in China and MERS was first seen in 2012 in Saudi
Arabia. The latest virus seen in Wuhan, China is called
SARS-COV-2 and it causes corona virus (COVID-19).
Since the report of the first case in December 2019, the
number of cases of corona virus are increasing along with
high death toll. Corona virus spread from that one city to
whole country and then, to the whole world.
As this COVID-19 is spread from person to person,
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning based
electronic devices can play a pivotal role in preventing the
spread of this virus. The increasing availability of
electronic health data can be used for training machine
learning algorithms to improve its decision- making in
terms of predicting diseases.
As the rise in number of cases of infected people
quickly outnumbered the available medical resources in
hospitals worldwide, it has resulted a substantial burden on
the health care systems [1] [2] [3]. Due to the limited
availability of resources at hospitals and the time delay for
the results of the medical tests, it is a typical situation for
health workers to give proper medical treatment to the
patients. In our thesis, we used machine learning
techniques to predict the spread of corona virus in patients.
Our study shows that in predicting the pandemic
situations and the spread of the virus, amidst many
machine learning models the Support Vector Regression
Model provided the best accuracy. We believe that using
the output of our model the authorities can take decisions
that will lead to the saving of countless lives of the people.
Additionally, this will also help to reduce the
immeasurable economic burden our country is facing at
this time.
II. BACKGROUND STUDIES
Researchers all over the world are wholeheartedly
trying to help the general people to fight this corona virus
pandemic. Researchers from the field of Computer Science
are attempting to conjecture the potential future cases to
help the countries plan for upcoming situations and act as
needed. Different machine learning and deep learning
models [4] [5] have done a noteworthy job till now to
forecast the COVID-19 confirmed cases, and the number
of deaths and recoveries. Shinde et al. [6] have provided
some important parameters for forecasting or predicting a
pandemic as - big data, mathematical models, machine
learning techniques, statistical, analytical parameters, daily
death count, daily infected cases, medical facilities,
mobility, transmission rate, age, gender, and geographical
locations. They also stated the fact that a lack of proper
data can have a negative impact on forecasting and
choosing the wrong prediction algorithm can be
misleading. Researchers in [7] have used some machine
learning models to forecast COVID-19 confirmed cases,
the number of death cases, and the number of recoveries
for 10 upcoming days. Another group of researchers [8]
worked on the growth rate of infected cases in India and
used ES and Polynomial Regression (PR) models to
predict the future cases. The study recorded in [9] used
LR, Multilayer perceptron (MLP), and Vector Auto-
Regressive (VAR) for forecasting COVID-19 cases in
India. But it is unfortunate for us that not so many
significant research has yet been made on data of
Bangladeshi people. Some of the works regarding this
country can be found in [10] [11] [12] [13].
III. METHODOLOGY
Our research work involves finding out the appropriate
approaches that can predict the number of COVID-19
cases, the number of patients recovering from COVID-19,
and the deaths due to COVID-19 using continuous data.
The flowchart of implemented system is shown in figure 1
below.
Figure 1: Flowchart for COVID-19 analysis and prediction
A. Dataset preparation
We used the time-series dataset by John Hopkins
University who collected data from different
government published sources and other sources (e.g.
WHO, ECDC, US CDC, BNO New). This real-time
dataset provided by John Hopkins University, USA can
be found at [14]. The data was preprocessed after
assortment. Keeping in mind the date of the first
confirmed case of COVID-19 in Bangladesh was 8th
March 2020. Hence, we collected the time series data
from 22 January 2020 to 22 January 2021 for our
research.
B. Training model development
At first we broke down the dataset into training set and
testing set. Then we examined following three machine
learning models used for regression on continuous data-
find out which algorithm performs best on the dataset.
 Polynomial Regression: Polynomial Regression
[15] [16] is a special kind of regression approach
to find the correlation between two variables
found using the nth degree polynomial of the
dependent variable.Equation 1 below shows how
the dependent and independent variables are
related:
y = c 0+ c 1x + c 2 x 1...c n x n
here y is the independent variable, x is the
dependent variable, c is a set of coefficients and n
is the number of degrees. For our research, we
used a 6 degree polynomial.
 Support Vector Machine: The objective of
Support Vector Machine (SVM) [17] [18] is to
find the hyperplane between the support vectors
and maximize the difference between two
separate classes, and it can be expressed as in
equation 2:
−‖x i −x j‖
2 of different models were evaluated on the basis of RMSE
( )
(2)
f ( x )= ∑ α i y i e
2
2σ
+b
where αi is the Lagrangian multiplier, ‖x i−x j‖
is the squared Euclidean distance between the
two feature vectors. The σ is the sigma parameter
of SVM which indicates the distance between the
closest points of different classes. For our system,
we are using the polynomial kernel as it
outperforms other kernels when tested on our
dataset.
 Bayesian Ridge Regression: Bayesian Ridge
Regression [19] estimates a probabilistic model
of the regression problem. Here the prior for the
coefficient w is given by spherical Gaussian as in
equation 3:
p( w∨λ)=N (w∨0 , λ−1) (3)
C. Data Visualization
We have used Python as the programming language of
our work. We have used Pandas Visualization [20] and
Matplotlib [21] for data visualization in Python.
D. Performance Evaluation Techniques
 Accuracy: The accuracy of a test [22] is its ability
to differentiate the correct and incorrect scenarios
correctly. To estimate the accuracy of a test, we
should calculate the proportion of true positive
and true negative in all evaluated cases which can
be stated as in equation 4:
TP+TN
Accuracy=
TP+TN + FP+ FN
(4)
where, TP is True positive values, TN is True
negative values, FP is False positive values, FN
is False negative values.
 Root Mean Square Error (RMSE): RMSE [23] is
the standard deviation of the residuals or
prediction errors, where residuals are a measure
of how far from the regression line data points
are. Lower values of  RMSE indicate a better fit.
The formula for calculating RMSE is shown in
equation 5:
√
n
1
RMSE= ∑ (f −o )2
n i=1 i i (5)
(1)
where, n is number of samples, f is forecasts, o is
observed values
IV. RESULTS
This section describes the results achieved by
experimenting with the proposed ML models mentioned in
the previous section. At first we trained and tested each of
the three models with the dataset in use. Their accuracy of
predicting infections for the 10 upcoming days were then
used to find out the best model. Finally, the pros and cons
values of their prediction ability. Based on our
assessments, SVM has proved itself to be the best model to
2 predict the number of COVID-19 cases for 10 upcoming
days. The results generated by the Regression models are
given below.
 Figure 2 and 3 show the worldwide confirmed cases
prediction using Polynomial Regression model. The
number of confirmed cases from 22nd January, 2020 to
22nd January, 2021 is 112M according to the model’s
prediction, where the real number of confirmed cases in
this time period is 98.204M. So this model is giving
97.8% accuracy.

Figure 5:Prediction of confirmed cases for upcoming 10

days by Bayesian Ridge Regression model

Figure 6 and 7 show the worldwide confirmed cases

Figure 2: Worldwide confirm cases prediction
graph using Polynomial Regression model
prediction using Support Vector Machine (SVM)
Regression model. The number of confirmed cases from
22nd January, 2020 to 22nd January, 2021 is 107M
according to the model’s prediction, so it is giving 98.62%
accuracy.

Figure 6: Worldwide confirm cases prediction graph

Figure 3: Prediction of confirmed cases for 10
using SVM Regression model
upcoming days by Polynomial Regression model

Figure 4 and 5 show the worldwide confirmed cases

prediction using Bayesian Ridge Regression model. The
number of confirmed cases from 22nd January, 2020 to
22nd January, 2021 is 113M according to the model’s
prediction, so it is giving 97.3% accuracy.

Figure 7: Prediction of confirmed cases for upcoming 10

days by SVM Regression model

Figure 4; Worldwide confirm cases prediction graph

using Bayesian Ridge Regression model As Polynomial Regression works well in smoothing
time series curves and the COVID-19 growth curve is yet
to start smoothing, hence the PR model did not fit well
with our dataset. Also, according to RMSE values of these
models, SVM Regression outperforms PR and BRR. It has
shown better accuracy than the others too. Table 1 below
shows the comparison of RMSE values of our models.
 Table 1: RMSE value of our models V. CONCLUSION
Using the forecasted information provided by our
Models Used RMSE for predicting confirmed case
system, the authorities will be able to take appropriate
SVM 1244128.9155 decisions in advance. Whenever utilized correctly, this
advance preparation will eventually lead to minimal loss of
PR 3190010.5892 lives. Furthermore, it will ensure the maximum utilization
BRR 3530575.996 of our resources to ensure our economy is still booming.
The proposed prediction system will be valuable for the
countries like Bangladesh who are aiming to sustain the
pandemic.
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