The incubation period of coronavirus disease (COVID-19): A tremendous public health threat-Forecasting from publicly available case data in India.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) a pandemic due to the huge upsurge in the number of reported cases worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic in India has become a public health threat, and if we go by the number of confirmed cases then the situation seems to be a matter of grave concern. According to real-time data, the numbers of confirmed cases are growing exponentially. No doubt, substantial public health interventions both at the national and state levels are implemented immediately by the Government of India; there is a need for improved preparedness plans and mitigation strategies along with accurate forecasting. The present study aims to forecast the COVID-19 outbreak infected cases in India. The data have been obtained from https://www.covid19india.org, https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus, and ICMR reported publicly available information about COVID-19 confirmation cases. We have used the double exponential smoothing method for forecasting the trends in terms of confirmed, active, recovered and death cases from COVID-19 for emergency preparedness and future predictions. Findings reveal that the estimated value of point forecast is just 8.22% of the total number of confirmed cases reported on a daily basis across the country. It was observed that the deaths were lower for the states and union territories with a higher detection rate. It is suggested that by keeping in view the limited healthcare resources in the country, accurate forecasting, early detection, and avoidance of acute care for the majority of infected cases is indispensable.