Dr. Nicholas Reich, Associate Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, kicked off the 2020-2021 CHDS online seminar series with an introduction to the COVID-19 Forecast Hub. His team creates probabilistic, ensemble forecasts of the COVID-19 pandemic in real-time, building on its experience with influenza forecasting.
The COVID-19 Forecast Hub is a consortium of modelling teams from around the world that develops U.S. forecasts. Since March 2020, the Hub has collected over 130 million rows of data from over 70 different forecasting models. The results estimate COVID-19 cases and deaths, as well as hospitalizations. These forecasts are fed weekly to the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s COVID-19 forecasting website. Dr. Reich highlighted the usefulness and challenges of using an ensemble model to help policymakers make decisions over the course of an epidemic.
This seminar is the first in a series of monthly online seminars hosted by CHDS. To be added to the email list for future seminars, please contact us at CHDS@HSPH.harvard.edu.
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