Epidemiologists launch new weekly forecast of coronavirus deaths

Epidemiologists at Imperial College London have launched a new weekly forecast of coronavirus deaths and transmissibility.

Imperial's scientists will present weekly forecasts of the reported number of deaths due to COVID-19 in the week ahead and analysis of case reporting trends for countries with active transmission.

Teams from the WHO Collaborating Centre for Infectious Disease Modelling; the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis and the Jameel Institute (J-IDEA) at Imperial; and the University of Sussex have produced the first report this week. 

In their first weekly report they estimate that the total number of deaths due to coronavirus in the next week will be greater than 5,000 in: France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.

For the 42 countries with active transmission they also looked at transmissibility measured by the reproduction number - the average number of cases that one infected individual is likely to infect).

They estimated that the pandemic is growing rapidly (when transmissibility is greater than 2) in 26 of the countries; including the UK, USA, France, Germany and India.

They estimate that it is growing slowly (transmissibility between 1 and 2) in the Netherlands and Spain, and is stabilising (transmissibility below 1) in 14 countries, including; South Korea, Italy and Norway.

The total number of reported deaths in the coming week is expected to be:

Greater than 5,000 deaths: France, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, United States of America

Between 1,000 to 5,000 deaths: Algeria, Belgium, Brazil, Germany, Iran, Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey

Between 100 to 1,000 deaths: Austria, Canada, Denmark, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden

Less than 100 deaths: Argentina, China, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Japan, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Morocco, Norway, Panama, South Korea

Estimates of transmissibility:

Growing rapidly: Algeria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States of America

Growing slowly: Netherlands, Spain

Stabilising: Argentina, Austria, Dominican Republic, Greece, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Italy, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Morocco, Norway, Panama, South Korea

The weekly forecasts will be available on the MRC GIDA website and the first forecast is available on GitHub.