Growth of an epidemic is influenced by the natural variation in climatic conditions and enforcement variation in government stringency policies. Though these variations do not prompt an instant change in the growth of an epidemic, effects of climatic conditions and stringency policies become apparent over time. Time-lagged relationships and functional dynamic connectivity among meteorological covariates and stringency levels generate many lagged features deemed to be important for prediction of reproduction rate, a measure for growth of an epidemic. This empirical study examines the importance scores of lagged features and implements distributed lag inspired feature selection with back testing for model selection and forecasting. A verification forecasting scheme is developed for continuous monitoring of the growth of an epidemic. We have demonstrated the monitoring process by computing a week ahead expected target of the reproduction rate and then by computing a one day ahead verification forecast to evaluate the progress towards the expected target. This evaluation procedure will aid the analysts with a decision making tool for any early adjustment of control options to suppress the transmission.