#15,343
Yesterday, in CDC Updated (June 23rd) COVID-19 Hospitalization Forecasts, we looked at the CDC estimate for daily hospitalizations from COVID-19 over the next 4 weeks, and found an extraordinary wide (15-fold) range between the lowest and highest estimates.
Today we have the latest weekly forecast of deaths for the next 4 weeks, which despite having 4 times as many models, projects a much narrower range of scenarios.
The CDC has been running these models several weeks longer than the hospitalization forecasts - making them more refined - and deaths are a bit easier to forecast because the current number of hospitalized cases provides a baseline for expected COVID deaths over the next few weeks.
There are still uncertainties, of course.
The recent spike in COVID-19 cases around the country may not be fully expressed in these models. But, on the other hand - anecdotal reports suggest far more younger adults are being infected right now - and that could drive down fatal outcomes in the near term.
As always, these models are useful as a general guide, but should be taken with a grain of salt. 
Updated June 24, 2020Interpretation of Cumulative Death Forecasts
- This week CDC received 20 individual national forecasts.
- This week’s national ensemble forecast suggests that there will likely be between 130,000 and 150,000 total reported COVID-19 deaths by July 18th.
- The state-level ensemble forecasts suggest that the number of new deaths over the next four weeks in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Florida, Hawaii, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah will likely exceed the number reported over the last four weeks. For other states, the number of new deaths is expected to be similar to the number seen in the previous four weeks or to decrease slightly.
National Forecast
- The figure shows cumulative reported COVID-19 deaths and forecasted deaths for the next four weeks in the United States.
- 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.
State Forecasts
State-level forecasts figures show observed and forecasted state-level cumulative COVID-19 deaths in the US. Each state forecast uses a different scale, due to differences in the numbers of COVID-19 deaths occurring in each state.
Forecasts fall into one of two categories
- The Auquan, CAN, Geneva, GT-DeepCOVID, Imperial, ISU, LANL, LSHTM, MIT, MOBS, Oliver Wyman, NotreDame-Mobility, UA, UCLA, UMass-MB, and UT forecasts assume that existing control measures will remain in place during the prediction period.
- The Columbia, Covid19Sim, GT_CHHS, JHU, NotreDame-FRED, PSI, and YYG forecasts make different assumptions about how levels of social distancing will change in the future.
