Forecasting Confirmed COVID-19 Cases
March 16, 2020
Beginning to track Covid-19 Cases in Colorado by County
No longer providing additional commentary, it’s too grim. But still updating these two charts: Cases per million and Total Cases
Update 10:00a March 20
Colorado has made some nice improvements and I can now recommend a visit to https://covid19.colorado.gov/data. I still think the numbers are way too low versus reality but the reporting has improved a lot. They’re reporting 277 cases as of yesterday. My model suggests the number of cases is around 700.
In the US, number of cases jumped to 10,442 yesterday but already this morning I’m seeing 14,250 on this JHU dashboard. This is in line with my more aggressive model prediction of 13,781 cases for today.
Update 6:38p March 18
US Cases now 7,769. My prediction for today, based on the original model, was 7,203. My original prediction for tomorrow was 8,877; my new prediction for tomorrow, including more recent figures, is 9,946. The actual number is almost certainly a lot higher.
Colorado is not keeping up. They have a dedicated site at https://covid19.colorado.gov/data but total cases posted is 216, up only 32 from 184 yesterday. I think maybe they have their heads in the sand or they just have bigger fish to fry. My model suggests the current number is closer to 500 and tomorrow it should be ~700.
Update 6:25p March 17
Number of US cases is now up to 6,423 (even higher than predicted!). Colorado is not reporting a different number, they still say 160, but one news outlet reported 183. I’m pretty confident the number will go up sharply next time the Colorado Dept of Public Health posts a meaningful update.
Original article:
I’ve been downloading data from a GitHub repository maintained by the John Hopkin’s University Center for Systems Science and Engineering and I’ve decided to try forecasting the number of confirmed cases in the US and in the State of Colorado.
Here’s a link to the data and my very simplistic exponential models: COVID-19 Models
As of March 16 the US has 4,632 confirmed cases. I project the number of cases will jump to ~5,800 cases tomorrow (3/17) and ~25,200 cases in one week (3/24).
In Colorado, there are currently 160 confirmed cases. I project the number of cases will jump to ~350 cases tomorrow (3/17) and ~4,000 cases in one week (3/24).
I hope both of these forecasts turn out to be way too high. We’ll see how it goes. Hang tight, friends.
3 Comments
Thank you Justin. I value your information and analysis.
Thank you President Mottet!
I think it would be interesting for you to compare these projections now that we have more data.