Scientific Reports (Dec 2021)
Estimation of COVID-19 recovery and decease periods in Canada using delay model
Abstract
Abstract We derive a novel model escorted by large scale compartments, based on a set of coupled delay differential equations with extensive delays, in order to estimate the incubation, recovery and decease periods of COVID-19, and more generally any infectious disease. This is possible thanks to some optimization algorithms applied to publicly available database of confirmed corona cases, recovered cases and death toll. In this purpose, we separate (1) the total cases into 14 groups corresponding to 14 incubation periods, (2) the recovered cases into 406 groups corresponding to a combination of incubation and recovery periods, and (3) the death toll into 406 groups corresponding to a combination of incubation and decease periods. In this paper, we focus on recovery and decease periods and their correlation with the incubation period. The estimated mean recovery period we obtain is 22.14 days (95% Confidence Interval (CI) 22.00–22.27), and the 90th percentile is 28.91 days (95% CI 28.71–29.13), which is in agreement with statistical supported studies. The bimodal gamma distribution reveals that there are two groups of recovered individuals with a short recovery period, mean 21.02 days (95% CI 20.92–21.12), and a long recovery period, mean 38.88 days (95% CI 38.61–39.15). Our study shows that the characteristic of the decease period and the recovery period are alike. From the bivariate analysis, we observe a high probability domain for recovered individuals with respect to incubation and recovery periods. A similar domain is obtained for deaths analyzing bivariate distribution of incubation and decease periods.