COVID-19 Forecasts: Cases

Interpretation of Forecasts of New Cases

• This week, CDC received forecasts of new reported COVID-19 cases over the next 4 weeks from 28 modeling groups that were included in the ensemble forecasts.
• This week’s national ensemble predicts that the number of newly reported COVID-19 cases will likely increase over the next 4 weeks with 1,200,000 to 2,300,000 new cases likely to be reported in the week ending January 9, 2021.
• The state- and territory-level ensemble forecasts predict that over the next 4 weeks, the number of new reported cases per week will likely decrease in 9 jurisdictions and increase in 7 jurisdictions, which are indicated in the forecast plots below. Trends in numbers of future reported cases are uncertain or predicted to remain stable in the other states and territories.

National Forecasts

• The figure shows the number of new COVID-19 cases reported nationally in the United States each week from October 10 to December 12, 2020 and forecasted new cases over the next 4 weeks, through January 9, 2021.
• 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.

Download national forecast data excel icon[XLS – 19 KB]

State & County Forecasts

State-level and county-level forecast figures show observed and forecasted new COVID-19 cases in each location. Each forecast uses a different scale due to differences in the numbers of COVID-19 cases occurring in each jurisdiction. To aid in comparisons between jurisdictions, the ensemble plot for each location has a second axis (in grey) that shows the expected number of cases per 100,000 people.

Download forecasts for states and territories and for counties pdf icon[PDF – 11 MB] ¹

Download all forecast data excel icon[CSV – 15 MB]

Additional forecast data and information on forecast submission are available at the COVID-19 Forecast Hubexternal icon.

Forecast Inclusion and Assumptions

The forecasts included in the ensembles are displayed below. Forecasts are included when they meet a set of submission and data quality requirements, further described here: https://github.com/reichlab/covid19-forecast-hub#ensemble-modelexternal icon.

The forecasts make different assumptions about social distancing measures. Information about individual models is available here: https://github.com/cdcepi/COVID-19-Forecasts/blob/master/COVID-19_Forecast_Model_Descriptions.mdexternal icon.

Intervention assumptions fall into one of three categories:

• These modeling groups make assumptions about how levels of social distancing will change in the future:
  • Columbia Universityexternal icon (Model: Columbia)
  • COVID-19 Simulator Consortiumexternal icon (Model: CovidSim)
  • Johns Hopkins University, Infectious Disease Dynamics Labexternal icon (Model: JHU-IDD)
  • University of California, Los Angelesexternal icon (Model: UCLA)
• These groups assume that existing social distancing measures will continue through the projected 4-week time period:
  • Bob Paganoexternal icon (Model: BPagano)
  • Carnegie Mellon Delphi Groupexternal icon (Model: CMU)
  • Columbia University and University of North Carolinaexternal icon (Model: Columbia-UNC)
  • Discrete Dynamical Systemsexternal icon (Model: DDS)
  • IEMexternal icon (Model: IEM)
  • Iowa State Universityexternal icon (Model: ISU)
  • IQVIA Analytics Center of Excellenceexternal icon (Model: IQVIA)
  • Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Labexternal icon (model: JHU-APL)
  • Johns Hopkins University, Center for Systems Science and Engineeringexternal icon (Model: JHU-CSSE)
  • Johns Hopkins University, University of North Carolina, and Googleexternal icon (Model: JHU-UNC-Google)
  • Karlen Working Groupexternal icon (Model: Karlen)
  • LockNQuayexternal icon (Model: LNQ)
  • Los Alamos National Laboratoryexternal icon (Model: LANL)
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Operations Research Centerexternal icon (Model: MIT-ORC)
  • OneQuietNightexternal icon (Model: OneQuietNight)
  • Pandemic Centralexternal icon (Model: PandemicCentral)
  • Qi-Jun Hongexternal icon (Model: QJHong)
  • Robert Walravenexternal icon (Model: ESG)
  • University of Central Floridaexternal icon (Model: UCF)
  • University of Massachusetts, Amherstexternal icon (Model: UMass)
  • University of Michiganexternal icon (Model: UM)
  • University of Southern Californiaexternal icon (Model: USC)
  • Wadhwani AIexternal icon (Model: Wadhwani)
• The University of Virginiaexternal icon (Model UVA) model makes both assumptions, combining different models.

¹ The full range of the prediction intervals is not visible for all state plots. Please see the forecast data for the full range of state specific prediction intervals.