Stabilization of the coronavirus pandemic in Italy and global prospects

ABSTRACT The pandemic caused by coronavirus COVID-19 are of great concern. A detailed scientific analysis of this phenomenon is still to come, but now it is urgently needed to evaluate the parameters of the disease dynamics in order to make some preliminary estimations of the number of cases and possible duration of the pandemic. The corresponding mathematical models must be simple enough, since their parameters are unknown and have to be estimated using limited statistical data sets. The SIR model, statistical approach to the parameter identification and the official WHO daily data about the confirmed cumulative number of cases were used to calculate the SIR curves and make some estimations and predictions. New cases in Italy could stop to appear after May 12, 2020, and the final number of such accumulated cases could be around 112 thousand. Some prospects for the global pandemic dynamics are discussed.