Forecasting Covid-19 New Cases in Barbados

The crisis of COVID-19 is growing and has devastating implications for many countries around the world. In this research article, the ANN technique was applied to analyze daily COVID-19 cases based on new cases of COVID-19 in Barbados 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 employed model suggest that the model is stable in forecasting COVID-19 cases in Barbados. The results of the study imply that that daily COVID-19 cases in Barbados are likely to remain relatively low over the out-of-sample period. The government should continue to implement strong control and preventive measures in order to save lives despite the projected relatively low COVID-19 case volumes.