Forecasting Covid-19 New Cases in Senegal

COVID-19 has caused serious devastations to human populations across the world and Senegal, just like other African countries; has been affected too. In this article, the ANN model was applied to forecast COVID-19 cases in Senegal. This study is based on daily new cases of COVID-19 in Senegal 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 indicate that the model is stable in forecasting daily COVID-19 cases in the country. The results of the study indicate that daily COVID-19 cases in Senegal are likely to decline significantly over the out-of-sample period. We encourage the government of Senegal to continue applying all World Health Organization (WHO) recommended control and preventive measures such as social distancing, sanitizing hands, washing of hands, face-mask wearing as well as vaccinations.