Forecasting Covid-19 New Cases in Slovakia

The tail end of 2019 will never be forgotten due to the coming-in of the novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China; which has continued to threaten our lives and livelihoods. Just like any other country affected, Slovakia is struggling to halt the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, the ANN approach was applied to analyze COVID-19 case volumes in Slovakia. This study is based on daily new cases of COVID-19 in Slovakia 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 COVID-19 cases in Slovakia. The study showed that daily COVID-19 cases in Slovakia are likely to remain significantly high over the out-of-sample period. Control and preventive measures need to be strictly followed and observed all the time, especially the vaccine roll-out programme; alongside wearing of masks, regular washing of hands as well as social distancing among other things.