Background

This report provides a brief summary of the weekly ensemble forecast from the COVID-19 Forecast Hub based on forecasts submitted on January 03, 2022. In collaboration with the US CDC, our team aggregates COVID-19 forecasts from dozens of teams around the globe. Typically on Wednesday 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, 41 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 up to four weeks into the future, as the available evidence suggests that models are less accurate at longer forecast horizons.

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

COVID-19 Forecasts

National level

This week, our ensemble combined forecasts from 27 different models.

At the national level, the ensemble model predicts that weekly totals of observed deaths in each of the next four weeks will be between 14,700 and 25,600 deaths with around 915,700 deaths by January 29, 2022 (95% prediction interval: 911,691 - 919,943).

For the week ending January 29, 2022, the ensemble forecasts that reported COVID-19 deaths in the US will be between 19,700 and 30,500 (95% prediction interval: 19,722 - 30,503).

As of September 28, 2021 the ensemble forecast only reports one-week ahead forecasts for cases and 14 day ahead forecasts for hospitalizations, due to persistent large inaccuracies observed when forecasting beyond that.

For January 17, 2022 COVID-19 daily hospitalizations in the US will be between 22,100 and 39,900 (95% prediction interval: 22,075 - 39,937).

For the week ending January 08, 2022, the ensemble forecasts that reported COVID-19 cases in the US will be between 2,324,500 and 4,196,500 (95% prediction interval: 2,324,491 - 4,196,532).

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

Deaths

Hospitalizations

Cases

State level

The ensemble model estimates that 46 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.The model forecasts that 32 states and territories have a greater than 75% chance of an increase over the next two weeks (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, United States).

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 01, 2022) and the forecasted counts for the subsequent two weeks (ending January 15, 2022).

Looking at the rates allows for easier comparison across states, where you can see which states have had or are predicted to have proportionally higher rates in comparison to other states.

When interpreting probability of an increase, it’s important to note that the increase or decrease is relative to the location-specific recent observed incidence, which varies across locations.

Death rates

The sortable and searchable death table below shows the total number of reported COVID-19 deaths at the US level and by state as of Saturday, January 01, 2022 (“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.

Hospitalization rates

The sortable and searchable hospitalization table below shows the 7 day average hospitalization count and rate of reported COVID-19 hospitalization in the population (standardized per 100,000 population) over the last week (December 26, 2021 to January 01, 2022) and two weeks ahead (January 09, 2022 to January 15, 2022).

Case rates

The sortable and searchable case table below shows the weekly case count and rate of reported COVID-19 case in the population (standardized per 100,000 population) over the last week (December 26, 2021 to January 01, 2022) and one week ahead (January 02, 2022 to January 08, 2022).

Methods & Acknowledgement

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