Background

This report provides a brief summary of the weekly ensemble forecast from the COVID-19 Forecast Hub based on forecasts submitted on December 12, 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, 30 models were submitted.

Each Tuesday, we combine the most recent forecasts from each team into a single "ensemble" forecast of reported COVID-19 deaths, hospitalizations and cases 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 22 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 2,700 and 3,500 deaths with around 1,097,100 deaths by January 07, 2023 (95% prediction interval: 1,091,153 - 1,105,038).

For the week ending January 07, 2023, the ensemble forecasts that reported COVID-19 deaths in the US will be between 1,400 and 5,400 (95% prediction interval: 1,408 - 5,378).

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 December 26, 2022 COVID-19 daily hospitalizations in the US will be between 3,200 and 10,000 (95% prediction interval: 3,203 - 10,041).

For the week ending December 17, 2022, the ensemble forecasts that reported COVID-19 cases in the US will be between 301,100 and 631,400 (95% prediction interval: 301,078 - 631,380).

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 32 out of 50 states and 4 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 5 states and territories have a greater than 75% chance of an increase over the next two weeks (Alaska, Ohio, Washington, 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, December 10, 2022) and the forecasted counts for the subsequent two weeks (ending December 24, 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, December 10, 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 04, 2022 to December 10, 2022) and two weeks ahead (December 18, 2022 to December 24, 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 04, 2022 to December 10, 2022) and one week ahead (December 11, 2022 to December 17, 2022).

Methods & Acknowledgement

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