COVID-19 peak estimation and effect of nationwide lockdown in India

There was a fury of the pandemic because of novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV/SARS-CoV-2) that happened in Wuhan, Hubei province, in China in December 2019. Since then, many model predictions on the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan and other parts of China have been reported. The first incident of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in India was reported on 30 January 2020, which was a student from Wuhan. The number of reported cases has started to increase day by day after 30 February 2020. The purpose of this investigation is to provide a prediction of the epidemic peak for COVID-19 in India by utilizing real-time data from 30 February to 14 April 2020. We apply the well-known epidemic compartmental model “SEIR” to predict the epidemic peak of COVID-19, India. Since we do not have the complete detail of the infective population, using the available infected population data, we identify the R₀ by using polynomial regression. By using the third-order polynomial equation, we estimate that the basic reproduction number for the epidemic in India is R₀ = 3.3 (95%CI, 3.1–3.5), and the epidemic peak could be reached by September 2020.