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 29 modeling groups.
• This week’s national ensemble forecast indicates an uncertain trend in new COVID-19 cases reported over the next four weeks and predicts that 140,000 to 370,000 new cases will likely be reported during the week ending October 17, 2020.
• The state- and territory-level ensemble forecasts predict that over the next four weeks, the number of new reported cases per week may decrease in 14 states and territories, which are labeled on 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 July 18 to September 19, 2020, and forecasted new cases over the next four weeks, through October 17, 2020.
• 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 & 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 – 533 pages] ¹

Download forecast data excel icon[1 sheet]

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

Forecast Assumptions

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)
  • John Burantexternal icon (Model: JCB)
  • University of California, Los Angelesexternal icon (Model: UCLA)
• These groups assume that existing social distancing measures will continue through the projected four-week time period:
  • Berkeley Yu Groupexternal icon (Model: Yu_Group)
  • Carnegie Mellon Delphi Groupexternal icon (Model: CMU)
  • Columbia University and University of North Carolinaexternal icon (Model: Columbia-UNC)
  • Discrete Dynamical Systemsexternal icon (Model: DDS)
  • Institute of Business Forecastingexternal icon (Model: IBF)
  • Iowa State Universityexternal icon (Model: ISU)
  • IQVIA Analytics Center of Excellenceexternal icon (Model: IQVIA)
  • Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Labexternal icon (model: JHU-APL)
  • Karlen Working Groupexternal icon (Model: Karlen)
  • LockNQuayexternal icon (Model: LNQ)
  • Los Alamos National Laboratoryexternal icon (Model: LANL)
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, COVID-19 Policy Allianceexternal icon (Model: MIT-CovAlliance)
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Operations Research Centerexternal icon (Model: MIT-ORC)
  • Oliver Wymanexternal icon (Model: Oliver Wyman)
  • Pandemic Centralexternal icon (Model: PandemicCentral)
  • Qi-Jun Hongexternal icon (Model: QJHong)
  • Robert Walravenexternal icon (Model: ESG)
  • US Army Engineer Research and Development Centertxt iconexternal icon (Model: ERDC)
  • University of Geneva/Swiss Data Science Center (one-week ahead forecasts only)external icon (Model: Geneva)
  • University of Georgia Center for the Ecology of Infectious Diseases Forecasting Working Groupexternal icon (Model: UGA-CEID)
  • University of Massachusetts, Amherstexternal icon (Model: UMass)
  • University of Michiganexternal icon (Model: UM)
  • University of Southern Californiaexternal icon (Model: USC)
• 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.