Month: September 2020

What do you get when you apply price analysis methods commonly practiced by financial analysts to COVID19 data? Sunway University has discovered that applying the concepts of support and resistance in the analysis of case trend data can enable the identification of countries that are in the process of facing second waves of COVID19 infections.

The concept of support level in price analysis is when a variable is expected to worsen, but a myriad of factors causes the variable to slow in its worsening progress. On the contrary, a resistance level works in the opposite where an improvement in the variable is met with various factors that cause the improvement to be slowed down.

Using these concepts on COVID19 case data, Sunway University first analysed Total Case data globally in the initial stage of the pandemic as a control mechanism. Based on Figure 1, it is observed that daily confirmed cases vary day-to-day but are generally on a rising trend. This is where the Sunway University team led by Dr Chook Jack Bee, and supported by Prof David Bradley, Prof Teo Kok Lay, Dr Lai Kee Huong, Dr Jane Teh Kimm Lii and Dr Peh Suat Cheng, introduced the idea of supports in the analysis (indicated by the yellow bars).

Applying this simple concept to individual countries reveals more revealing observations. Figure 2 illustrates an example undertaken on United Kingdom. “These support and resistance thresholds are determined from the observed ‘valleys’ of the data plot. The first ‘valley’ will serve as baseline. If the second and third ‘valley’ are higher than the baseline, then it is likely that there is support for a rising trend and vice versa. The red line shows stringency and in respect of incidence would seem to show that even a relatively small relaxation in the former can produce a steep rise in incidence (subsequent to a period of latency). The UK data do not represent a singularity, there being a good many other examples of national data that support such an emergent picture,” explains Dr Chook.

Using 90-day COVID-19 data up till 27th September, the Sunway University team have identified 23 countries that are likely on a trend of new waves of COVID19 in the very near future. These include Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Georgia, Iceland, Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Montenegro, Mozambique, Myanmar, Netherland, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States and Uruguay.

Sunway University is currently applying machine learning methods to be able to quickly ascertain similar patterns as the infection continues to evolve. “We hope this analysis will prompt respective countries the urgency to undertake proper measures to counter the rising trend of COVID-19 cases,” added Dr Chook.

Credit to: Dr Chook Jack Bee, Prof David Bradley, Prof Teo Kok Lay, Dr Lai Kee Huong, Dr Jane Teh Kimm Lii and Dr Peh Suat Cheng, Sunway University

Note: The above analysis was made possible by the collaboration of Sunway University with the Global COVID-19 Index (GCI) initiative.