A method for forecasting the number of hospitalized and deceased based on the number of newly infected during a pandemic

Abstract In this paper we propose a phenomenological model for forecasting the numbers of deaths and of hospitalized persons in a pandemic wave, assuming that these numbers linearly depend, with certain delays $$\tau >0$$ τ > 0 for deaths and $$\delta >0$$ δ > 0 for hospitalized, on the number of new cases. We illustrate the application of our method using data from the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Croatia, but the method can be applied to any new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as to any other possible pandemic. We also supply freely available Mathematica modules to implement the method.