Predicting the impact of the third wave of COVID-19 in India using hybrid statistical machine learning models: A time series forecasting and sentiment analysis approach.

Background: Since January 2020, India has faced two waves of COVID-19; preparation for the upcoming waves is the primary challenge for public health sectors and governments. Therefore, it is important to forecast future cumulative confirmed cases to plan and implement control measures effectively.

Methods: This study proposed a hybrid autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) and Prophet model to predict daily confirmed and cumulative confirmed cases.