Prediction of the Epidemic Strength of COVID-19 in the Holy Places of Saudi Arabia during the Forthcoming Hajj Season 2020

Alheadary W¹, Azim MA^{2, 3* 1}Taibah University, Madina, Saudi Arabia ²University of Prince Mugrin, Madina, Saudi Arabia ³Beni-Suef University, Egypt

Corresponding Author: Mohamed Mostafa A. Azim Address: Department of Computer Science, College of Computer and Cyber Sciences, University of Prince, Mugrin, Saudi Arabia. Received date: 15 July 2020; Accepted date: 15 August 2020; Published date: 29 August 2020

Citation: Alheadary W, Azim MA. Prediction of the Epidemic Strength of COVID-19 in the Holy Places of Saudi Arabia during the Forthcoming Hajj Season 2020. J Health Care and Research. 2020 Aug 29;1(3):125-34.

Copyright © 2020 Alheadary W, Azim MA. This is an open-access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Keywords: Coronavirus, COVID-19, Epidemic in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

The first outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic in Saudi Arabia was reported on March 2^nd, 2020. Every year more than 2 million people come from more than 188 countries to Saudi Arabia to perform pilgrimage (Hajj in Arabic). Therefore, extrapolating the epidemic strength during the Hajj season (end of July) in the holy places has become essential. In this paper, we employ the power of mathematical modeling to infer the epidemic intensity over a 300 days’ time span in Saudi Arabia generally and the Holy places specifically. In particular, we obtain the following epidemiological insights such as the number of infections, the daily infection increase, the expected number of death cases, and the epidemic peak. Results indicate that, the epidemic peak has already been reached in both Makka and Madina. In addition, the number of infections will reach its saturation point by the first week of October 2020 as the daily increase in the number of infections will diminish. This means that, Hajj can be conducted safely only by reducing the number of pilgrims and providing suitable sets of preventive and precautionary measures.