Trend Analysis and Predictions of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Ethiopia

Background: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is affecting both lives of millions of people and the global economy of the world day by day. This study aimed to determine the trend of COVID19 and its predictions in Ethiopia. Study Design: This study was conducted based on a time series design. Methods: The required data were collected from the Ethiopian COVID-19 monitoring platform beginning from the onset of the disease in the country until March 28, 2021. Furthermore, the autoregressive integrated moving average models were used on daily-based time series. The Poisson and Negative Binomial regression were also employed to notice the effects of months on the transmission and disease-related human deaths. Results: The mean daily infection and death of COVID-19 in Ethiopia were 533.47±466.62 and 7.45±6.72, respectively. The peaks of infection and deaths in this country were in March, 2021, and August, 2020. In addition, the trend of daily new deaths (P=0.000) and infection (P=0.000) was significantly increasing. It is expected that around 10 million (8.6%) and 138,084.64 (0.12%) Ethiopians will be infected and die, respectively. Conclusions: The disease transmission and deaths vary from day to day and month to month. The highest peaks of COVID-19 infection and death were in March 2021 and August 2020. For the next end of August 2021, the COVID-19 daily new infection, new death, total case, and total death are expected to be increased. If this epidemic disease is not controlled, Ethiopia will face a severe shortage of hospitals, and the outbreak even becomes worse