Epidemiological analysis of hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome in China with the seasonal-trend decomposition method and the exponential smoothing model

Hemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS) is one of the most common infectious diseases globally. With the most reported cases in the world, the epidemic characteristics are still remained unclear in China. This paper utilized the seasonal-trend decomposition (STL) method to analyze the periodicity and seasonality of the HFRS data, and used the exponential smoothing model (ETS) model to predict incidence cases from July to December 2016 by using the data from January 2006 to June 2016. Analytic results demonstrated a favorable trend of HFRS in China, and with obvious periodicity and seasonality, the peak of the annual reported cases in winter concentrated on November to January of the following year, and reported in May and June also constituted another peak in summer. Eventually, the ETS (M, N and A) model was adopted for fitting and forecasting, and the fitting results indicated high accuracy (Mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) = 13.12%). The forecasting results also demonstrated a gradual decreasing trend from July to December 2016, suggesting that control measures for hemorrhagic fever were effective in China. The STL model could be well performed in the seasonal analysis of HFRS in China, and ETS could be effectively used in the time series analysis of HFRS in China.