COVID-19 Forecast Hub weekly report

Background

This report provides a brief summary of the weekly ensemble forecast from the COVID-19 Forecast Hub based on forecasts submitted on January 18, 2021. In collaboration with the US CDC, our team aggregates COVID-19 forecasts from dozens of teams around the globe. Typically on Wednesday or Thursday of each week, a summary of the week’s forecasts from the COVID-19 Forecast Hub appear on the official CDC COVID-19 forecasting page.

Every week, teams submit their forecasts to the COVID-19 Forecast Hub. This past week, 57 models were submitted.

Each Monday evening or Tuesday morning, we combine the most recent forecasts from each team into a single “ensemble” forecast of reported COVID-19 cases at the county, state, and national level and deaths at the state and national level. At the moment, we only generate ensemble forecasts for four weeks into the future, as we don’t have reliable evidence that the models are accurate past that horizon.

An archive of weekly reports from the COVID-19 Forecast Hub can be found at this page.

COVID-19 Mortality Forecasts

National level

This week, our ensemble combined forecasts from 46 different models.

At the national level, the ensemble model’s best guess is that we will see between 22,500 and 23,300 deaths each week for the next four weeks (Figure 1) with around 487,700 deaths by February 13 (95% prediction interval: 465,431 - 508,000).

For the week ending February 13, the ensemble forecasts that reported COVID-19 deaths in the US will be between 17,000 and 29,300 (95% prediction interval: 16,957 - 29,287).

You can explore the full set of models, including their forecasts for past weeks online at our interactive forecast visualization.

Figure 1: Weekly observed and forecasted COVID-19 deaths. Observed data from JHU CSSE and forecasts from the COVID-19 Forecast Hub.

State-by-state Breakdown

The ensemble model estimates that 28 states and territories of the US have a greater than 50% chance of having more deaths in the next two weeks compared to the past two weeks (Table 1).The model forecasts that 5 states and territories have a greater than 75% chance of an increase over the next two weeks (Alaska, Florida, Virginia, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands).

The sortable and searchable table below shows the total number of reported COVID-19 deaths at the US level and by state over the last two weeks (ending Saturday, January 16, 2021) and the forecasted counts for the subsequent two weeks (ending January 30, 2021).

The sortable and searchable table below shows the total number of reported COVID-19 deaths at the US level and by state as of Saturday, January 16, 2021 (“Total COVID-19 Deaths”) as well as the rate of reported COVID-19 deaths in the population (standardized per 100,000 population) over the last two weeks and over the next two weeks. Looking at the rates allows for easier comparison across states, where you can see which states have had or are predicted to have propoportionally higher rates in comparison to other states. These tables calculate an average daily number of deaths per 100,000 population across the last two weeks (ending Saturday, January 16, 2021) and forecasted for the following two weeks (ending January 30, 2021).

This report was reproducibly and dynamically generated using RMarkdown. The code for the report can be found here.