# Forecasting the Spread of COVID-19 in Kuwait Using Compartmental and Logistic Regression Models
## 1 Introduction
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c c c c c c} \hline \hline \multirow{2}{*}{**Date**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Number**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Accumulated**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Date**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Number**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Accumulated**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Date**} & \multicolumn{2}{c}{**Number**} & \multirow{2}{*}{**Case**} \\  & **of New** & & & & & & & **Cases** \\ \hline
24 February & 5 & 5 & 14 March & 4 & 104 & 2 April & 25 & 342 \\ \hline
25 February & 6 & 11 & 15 March & 8 & 112 & 3 April & 75 & 417 \\ \hline
26 February & 15 & 26 & 16 March & 11 & 123 & 4 April & 62 & 479 \\ \hline
27 February & 17 & 43 & 17 March & 7 & 130 & 5 April & 77 & 556 \\ \hline
28 February & 2 & 45 & 18 March & 12 & 142 & 6 April & 109 & 665 \\ \hline
29 February & 0 & 45 & 19 March & 6 & 148 & 7 April & 78 & 743 \\ \hline
1 March & 1 & 46 & 20 March & 11 & 159 & 8 April & 112 & 855 \\ \hline
2 March & 10 & 56 & 21 March & 17 & 176 & 9 April & 55 & 910 \\ \hline
3 March & 0 & 56 & 22 March & 12 & 188 & 10 April & 83 & 993 \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Number of newly reported novel coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) cases in Kuwait from 24 February until 19 April 2020. The different actions taken by the Kuwait Government are considered as nonpharmaceutical intervention measures that are expected to reduce the spread of COVID-19 cases [9]. In addition, the ministry of health carried out Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests to diagnose all the travelers to contain the spread. The number of detected infected cases of COVID-19 has been increasing gradually with controlled increments as a result of the containment measures. Most of the confirmed cases were imported cases of citizens coming back to Kuwait. However, some of the recently reported cases are identified as locally transmitted. This has resulted in a significant increase in the number of cases compared to the early days. Recently, Kuwait government announced that it will embark a repatriation plan of approximately 40,000 citizens who are located in various countries back to Kuwait, starting from 19 April 2020 until 5 May 2020. The repatriation plan adds another dimension of uncertainty for the prediction of the spread in the upcoming period. It is of utmost importance to investigate the various spread scenarios and their impact on the current infection spread and growth rate in Kuwait. In this study, predictions of the epidemic COVID-19 spread in Kuwait is presented using two mathematical prediction approaches of susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) and logistics regression modeling. Additionally, an investigation of the possible impact of the repatriation plan on the spread of COVID-19 in Kuwait is reported, taking into account the current prevention measures. The original contributions of this study can be listed as:  
1. To present the first mathematical model to predict the spread of COVID-19 in Kuwait to estimate the epidemic size, the reproduction number and an estimate for ending phase of the epidemic
2. To provide an assessment of the current government interventions measures and their effectiveness in containing the spread of COVID-19 in Kuwait with various simulation scenarios
3. To provide a forecast of the spread of COVID-19 after the repatriating plan of Kuwait citizens for policymakers to plan intervention measures