From Bushfires to COVID-19 : Forewarning Indicators of Coronavirus Pandemic in Australia

The purpose of this study is to determine the leading indicators of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia using daily data from 31 December 2019 to 14 October 2020. This study applies the signal extraction technique, which is usually used to predict a financial crisis to examine 30 COVID-19 indicators in Australia. The results show that the best indicator of the current pandemic in Australia is the number of new tests. Other significant variables that are important for monitoring the crisis are the total number of deaths and total number of COVID-19 cases in Australia. Increasing the number of new tests will lead to a decline in COVID-19 cases and mortality rate. Common factors such as cardiovascular death rate, diabetes prevalence, positive rate and the number of recoveries are contributing factors but are not leading indicators of COVID-19 in Australia. It is recommended that the Australian government find ways to encourage more people to test as the number of new tests has been declining recently