Background

This report provides a brief summary of the weekly ensemble forecast from the COVID-19 Forecast Hub based on forecasts submitted on February 14, 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, 52 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 34 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 10,700 and 15,100 deaths with around 968,000 deaths by March 12, 2022 (95% prediction interval: 954,922 - 976,809).

For the week ending March 12, 2022, the ensemble forecasts that reported COVID-19 deaths in the US will be between 6,300 and 13,200 (95% prediction interval: 6,287 - 13,180).

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 February 28, 2022 COVID-19 daily hospitalizations in the US will be between 2,000 and 11,000 (95% prediction interval: 1,993 - 11,016).

For the week ending February 19, 2022, the ensemble forecasts that reported COVID-19 cases in the US will be between 472,700 and 1,474,500 (95% prediction interval: 472,655 - 1,474,535).

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 8 out of 50 states and 3 out of 7 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 2 states and territories have a greater than 75% chance of an increase over the next two weeks (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, February 12, 2022) and the forecasted counts for the subsequent two weeks (ending February 26, 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, February 12, 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 (February 06, 2022 to February 12, 2022) and two weeks ahead (February 20, 2022 to February 26, 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 (February 06, 2022 to February 12, 2022) and one week ahead (February 13, 2022 to February 19, 2022).

Methods & Acknowledgement

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