Background

This report provides a brief summary of the weekly ensemble forecast from the COVID-19 Forecast Hub based on forecasts submitted on January 09, 2023. 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 24 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 3,300 and 3,500 deaths with around 1,110,700 deaths by February 04, 2023 (95% prediction interval: 1,106,668 - 1,114,844).

For the week ending February 04, 2023, the ensemble forecasts that reported COVID-19 deaths in the US will be between 1,600 and 5,900 (95% prediction interval: 1,588 - 5,932).

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 23, 2023 COVID-19 daily hospitalizations in the US will be between 4,000 and 10,500 (95% prediction interval: 3,962 - 10,454).

For the week ending January 14, 2023, the ensemble forecasts that reported COVID-19 cases in the US will be between 301,100 and 640,700 (95% prediction interval: 301,063 - 640,730).

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 36 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 16 states and territories have a greater than 75% chance of an increase over the next two weeks (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, Wyoming, American Samoa, Northern Mariana Islands, Virgin 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 07, 2023) and the forecasted counts for the subsequent two weeks (ending January 21, 2023).

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 07, 2023 ("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 (January 01, 2023 to January 07, 2023) and two weeks ahead (January 15, 2023 to January 21, 2023).

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 (January 01, 2023 to January 07, 2023) and one week ahead (January 08, 2023 to January 14, 2023).

Methods & Acknowledgement

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