Washington – US CDC has given the following interpretation of forecasts of new hospitalizations in the country.
- This week’s national ensemble predicts that the number of daily COVID-19 hospital admissions will remain stable or have an uncertain trend, with 190 to 2,400 daily COVID-19 hospital admissions likely reported on August 14.
- The state- and territory-level ensemble forecasts predict that over the next four weeks, trends in numbers of future hospitalizations are uncertain or predicted to remain stable in all states and territories.
- Ensemble forecasts combine diverse independent team forecasts into one forecast. While they have been among the most reliable forecasts in performance over time, even the ensemble forecasts have not reliably predicted rapid changes in the trends of reported cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. They should not be relied upon for making decisions about the possibility or timing of rapid changes in trends.
National Forecasts
- The figure shows the number of daily COVID-19 hospital admissions reported in the United States each day from May 9 through July 7 and forecasted daily COVID-19 hospital admissions over the next four weeks, through August 14.
- This week, ensemble forecasts of daily COVID-19 hospital admissions included forecasts from 8 modeling groups, each of which contributed a forecast for at least one jurisdiction.
- Models make various assumptions about the levels of social distancing and other interventions, which may not reflect recent changes in behavior. See model descriptions below for details on the assumptions and methods used to produce the forecasts.
State Forecasts
State-level forecasts show the predicted number of daily COVID-19 hospital admissions for the next four weeks by state. Each state forecast figure uses a different scale due to differences in the number of daily COVID-19 hospital admissions between states and only forecasts meeting a set of ensemble inclusion criteria are shown. Further details are available here: https://covid19forecasthub.org/doc/ensemble/. Plots of the state-level ensemble forecasts and the underlying data can be downloaded below. Additional forecast data and information about submitting forecasts are available at the COVID-19 Forecast Hub.
Forecast Inclusion, Evaluation, and Assumptions
The teams with forecasts included in the ensembles are displayed below. Forecasts are included when they meet a set of submission and data quality requirements, further described at the COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Ensemble and individual team forecast performance is evaluated using a variety of metrics, including the assessment of prediction interval coverage, available at https://delphi.cmu.edu/forecast-eval/.
Reported hospitalizations can vary due to variable staffing and inconsistent reporting patterns within the week. Thus, daily variations in the reported values and the forecasts may not fully represent the true number of hospitalizations in each jurisdiction on a specific day.