Abstract
Multiple waves of COVID-19 highlighted one crucial aspect of this pandemic worldwide that factors affecting the spread of COVID-19 infection are evolving based on various regional and local practices and events. The introduction of vaccines since early 2021 is expected to significantly control and reduce the cases. However, virus mutations and its new variant has challenged these expectations. Several countries, which contained the COVID-19 pandemic successfully in the first wave, failed to repeat the same in the second and third waves. This work focuses on COVID-19 pandemic control and management in Saudi Arabia. This work aims to predict new cases using deep learning using various important factors. The proposed method is called Deep Learning and Dynamic Weighing-based (DLDW) COVID-19 cases prediction method. Special consideration has been given to the evolving factors that are responsible for recent surges in the pandemic. For this purpose, two weights are assigned to data instance which are based on feature importance and dynamic weight-based time. Older data is given fewer weights and vice-versa. Feature selection identifies the factors affecting the rate of new cases evolved over the period. The DLDW method produced 80.39% prediction accuracy, 6.54%, 9.15%, and 7.19% higher than the three other classifiers, Deep learning (DL), Random Forest (RF), and Gradient Boosting Machine (GBM). Further in Saudi Arabia, our study implicitly concluded that lockdowns, vaccination, and self-aware restricted mobility of residents are effective tools in controlling and managing the COVID-19 pandemic.