COVID-19 Texas Weekly Forecast Summary

Background

This report provides a brief summary of the weekly ensemble forecast for Texas from the COVID-19 Forecast Hub. 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.

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.

Weekly reports from the COVID-19 Forecast Hub can be found at this page.

COVID-19 Forecasts

Since the inputs to the ensemble model do not factor in changes in behavior or policy that could have an impact on short-term disease transmission (e.g. school openings or closures, new interventions, governmental policy shift, etc...), the ensemble model itself should not be looked to for specific answers to questions like "what will happen if or when schools open in 2 weeks" because most of the input models are not factoring in these changes. That said, the ensemble model has consistently shown strong predictive performance in predicting mortality, and very few of the many interventions put in place appear to have created dramatic changes in short-term disease transmission that would impact short-term trends in mortality.

This week, our ensemble combined forecasts for Texas from 22 different models.

During periods of relative stability, models in general show broad agreement about the predicted trajectory of the outbreak. However, when there are steep surges or declines in cases or deaths, models often have quite different predictions for the upcoming weeks. The result is that there is increased uncertainty in the ensemble forecast, which can be seen as wider confidence intervals in the forecast visualization. You can explore the full set of models, including their forecasts for past weeks online at the Forecast Hub interactive visualization.

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.

Deaths

At the state level, the ensemble model predicts that weekly totals of observed deaths in each of the next four weeks will be between 183 and 224 deaths each week with around 93,140 total deaths by February 18, 2023. However for the week ending February 18, 2023, the ensemble shows substantial uncertainty, with observed deaths between 80 and 330 deemed possible (95% prediction interval: 76 - 330).

For state-level death forecasts made over the last 6 weeks in Texas for which observed data are now available, the 95% prediction intervals covered the truth 77% of the time, and the 50% prediction intervals covered the truth 66% of the time.

The sortable and searchable death table below shows the total number of reported COVID-19 deaths at the US level and state level for Texas as of Saturday, January 21, 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.

Hospitalizations

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

The ensemble model predicts that COVID-19 daily hospitalizations will be between 362 and 412 hospitalizations daily. However for February 06, 2023, the ensemble shows substantial uncertainty, with COVID-19 daily hospitalizations between 124 and 665 deemed possible.

For state-level hospitalization forecasts made over the last 6 weeks in Texas for which observed data are now available, the 95% prediction intervals covered the truth 96% of the time, and the 50% prediction intervals covered the truth 36% of the time. The forecasts on average over the last 6 weeks predicted values that were higher than the observed data.

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 15, 2023 to January 21, 2023) and two weeks ahead (January 29, 2023 to February 04, 2023).

Cases

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

For the week ending January 28, 2023, the ensemble forecasts that reported COVID-19 cases in the US will be between 12,100 and 38,700 (95% prediction interval: 12,120 - 38,738).

For state-level case forecasts made over the last 6 weeks in Texas for which observed data are now available, the 95% prediction intervals covered the truth 100% of the time, and the 50% prediction intervals covered the truth 50% of the time.

Figure 2: Weekly observed and forecasted COVID-19 cases. Observed data from JHU CSSE and forecasts from the COVID-19 Forecast Hub.

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 15, 2023 to January 21, 2023) and one week ahead (January 22, 2023 to January 28, 2023).

Methods & Acknowledgement

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