Forecasting Covid-19 New Cases in Bahamas

Caused by a novel coronavirus, COVID-19 has played havoc on many countries across the globe and the Bahamas have never been an exception. Just like the rest of the world, the country continues to live a restricted environment in order to prevent exposure to this highly infectious disease. In this research article, the ANN approach was used to model and forecast daily COVID-19 cases in Bahamas. This study is based on daily new cases of COVID-19 in Bahamas for the period 1 January 2020 – 25 March 2021. The out-of-sample forecast covers the period 26 March 2021 – 31 July 2021. The residuals and forecast evaluation criteria (Error, MSE and MAE) of the applied model show us that the model is stable in forecasting COVID-19 daily new infections in Bahamas. The results of the study indicate that daily COVID-19 cases in Bahamas are likely to hover around 55 cases per day over the out-of-sample period. We encourage government of the Bahamas to continue enforcing control and preventive measures such as mass-media sensitization, social distancing, face-mask wearing, contact tracing, disinfection and decontamination of infected areas, washing and sanitization of hands and so on as advised by the WHO.