Exploring COVID-19 Trends in Mexico during the Winter Season with Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)

Abstract

COVID-19 has become the most significant pandemic in recent years. Today, Mexico has recorded millions of infections and deaths since the pandemic started. Around the world, machine learning methods have been used to understand, predict or develop strategies to manage the virus and the pandemic. Although algorithms provide good results, it is necessary to understand why a model makes specific predictions with a particular data set. To explain this question, we apply Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) in this paper. With this, it is possible to understand the characteristics that influence the model decisions when denoting between deaths and survivors. As a case of study, the positive cases detected during the winter season of 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 were considered. In this season, respiratory diseases increased considerably, and in the study period, they influenced the increase in positive cases and the spread of COVID-19. Preliminary results suggest that age is essential when using a Random Forest model. Preliminary results suggest that age is essential when determining the prognosis of a patient infected by COVID-19 in winter seasons.