FOCUS: Forecasting COVID-19 in the United States

Infectious disease forecasting has been a useful tool for public health planning and messaging during the COVID-19 pandemic. In partnership with the CDC, the organizers of the COVID-19 Forecast Hub have created a mechanism for forecasters from academia, industry, and government organizations to submit weekly near-term predictions of COVID-19 targets in the United States. Here we describe our efforts to participate in the COVID-19 Forecast Hub through the Fo recasting CO VID-19 in the U nited S tates ( FOCUS ) project. The effort led to more than three months of weekly submissions and development of an automated pipeline to generate forecasts. The models used in FOCUS yielded forecasts that ranked relatively well in terms of precision and accuracy.