Real-time estimation and forecasting of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations in Wisconsin HERC regions for public health decision making processes.

BACKGROUND: The spread of the COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) and the surging number of cases across the United States have resulted in full hospitals and exhausted health care workers. Limited availability and questionable reliability of the data make outbreak prediction and resource planning difficult. Any estimates or forecasts are subject to high uncertainty and low accuracy to measure such components. The aim of this study is to apply, automate, and assess a Bayesian time series model for the real-time estimation and forecasting of COVID-19 cases and number of hospitalizations in Wisconsin healthcare emergency readiness coalition (HERC) regions. METHODS: This study makes use of the publicly available Wisconsin COVID-19 historical data by county. Cases and effective time-varying reproduction number [Formula: see text] by the HERC region over time are estimated using Bayesian latent variable models. Hospitalizations are estimated by the HERC region over time using a Bayesian regression model. Cases, effective Rt, and hospitalizations are forecasted over a 1-day, 3-day, and 7-day time horizon using the last 28 days of data, and the 20%, 50%, and 90% Bayesian credible intervals of the forecasts are calculated. The frequentist coverage probability is compared to the Bayesian credible level to evaluate performance. RESULTS: For cases and effective [Formula: see text], all three time horizons outperform the three credible levels of the forecast. For hospitalizations, all three time horizons outperform the 20% and 50% credible intervals of the forecast. On the contrary, the 1-day and 3-day periods underperform the 90% credible intervals. Questions about uncertainty quantification should be re-calculated using the frequentist coverage probability of the Bayesian credible interval based on observed data for all three metrics. CONCLUSIONS: We present an approach to automate the real-time estimation and forecasting of cases and hospitalizations and corresponding uncertainty using publicly available data. The models were able to infer short-term trends consistent with reported values at the HERC region level. Additionally, the models were able to accurately forecast and estimate the uncertainty of the measurements. This study can help identify the most affected regions and major outbreaks in the near future. The workflow can be adapted to other geographic regions, states, and even countries where decision-making processes are supported in real-time by the proposed modeling system.

Interventions to Disrupt Coronavirus Disease Transmission at a University, Wisconsin, USA, August-October 2020.

University settings have demonstrated potential for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreaks; they combine congregate living, substantial social activity, and a young population predisposed to mild illness. Using genomic and epidemiologic data, we describe a COVID-19 outbreak at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA. During August-October 2020, a total of 3,485 students, including 856/6,162 students living in dormitories, tested positive. Case counts began rising during move-in week, August 25-31, 2020, then rose rapidly during September 1-11, 2020. The university initiated multiple prevention efforts, including quarantining 2 dormitories; a subsequent decline in cases was observed. Genomic surveillance of cases from Dane County, in which the university is located, did not find evidence of transmission from a large cluster of cases in the 2 quarantined dorms during the outbreak. Coordinated implementation of prevention measures can reduce COVID-19 spread in university settings and may limit spillover to the surrounding community.

Association of Mobile Phone Location Data Indications of Travel and Stay-at-Home Mandates With COVID-19 Infection Rates in the US.

Importance: A stay-at-home social distancing mandate is a key nonpharmacological measure to reduce the transmission rate of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), but a high rate of adherence is needed. Objective: To examine the association between the rate of human mobility changes and the rate of confirmed cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection. Design, Setting, and Participants: This cross-sectional study used daily travel distance and home dwell time derived from millions of anonymous mobile phone location data from March 11 to April 10, 2020, provided by the Descartes Labs and SafeGraph to quantify the degree to which social distancing mandates were followed in the 50 US states and District of Columbia and the association of mobility changes with rates of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases. Exposure: State-level stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Main Outcomes and Measures: The main outcome was the association of state-specific rates of COVID-19 confirmed cases with the change rates of median travel distance and median home dwell time of anonymous mobile phone users. The increase rates are measured by the exponent in curve fitting of the COVID-19 cumulative confirmed cases, while the mobility change (increase or decrease) rates were measured by the slope coefficient in curve fitting of median travel distance and median home dwell time for each state. Results: Data from more than 45 million anonymous mobile phone devices were analyzed. The correlation between the COVID-19 increase rate and travel distance decrease rate was -0.586 (95% CI, -0.742 to -0.370) and the correlation between COVID-19 increase rate and home dwell time increase rate was 0.526 (95% CI, 0.293 to 0.700). Increases in state-specific doubling time of total cases ranged from 1.0 to 6.9 days (median [interquartile range], 2.7 [2.3-3.3] days) before stay-at-home orders were enacted to 3.7 to 30.3 days (median [interquartile range], 6.0 [4.8-7.1] days) after stay-at-home social distancing orders were put in place, consistent with pandemic modeling results. Conclusions and Relevance: These findings suggest that stay-at-home social distancing mandates, when they were followed by measurable mobility changes, were associated with reduction in COVID-19 spread. These results come at a particularly critical period when US states are beginning to relax social distancing policies and reopen their economies. These findings support the efficacy of social distancing and could help inform future implementation of social distancing policies should they need to be reinstated during later periods of COVID-19 reemergence.