Challenges of forecasting COVID-19 during the 2nd wave

Short term forecasts of 1 to 4 weeks of COVID-19 case numbers can be a valuable tool for deciding which measures are necessary to prevent an oversubscription of hospital beds and ICUs, but what is the quality of these predictions?

In "A pre-registered short-term forecasting study of COVID-19 in Germany and Poland during the second wave" published in Nature Communication (Bracher et al., DOI: 10.1038/s41467-021-25207-0), scientists from JSC together with colleagues from Europe and the USA analyze their predictions collected for Germany and Poland as part of the German-Polish forecasting hub during the second wave of COVID-19 (12 October – 19 December 2020). Individual forecast performance is compared to the quality of ensemble forecasts combining the individual forecasts. Ensemble forecasts performed well, but did not clearly beat single-model predictions although they seem more robust.

The contributions to the German-Polish forecasting hub are now also included in the European Covid-19 Forecast Hub that emphasizes the ensemble as the most reliable short-term forecasts.

Contact: Dr. Jan Meinke, Jülich Supercomputing Centre