Founded in late 2020 with the support of the MIDAS Coordination Center, the COVID 19 Scenario Modeling Hub is a community-driven modeling effort aimed at developing medium-term (3 -24 months) predictions of the course of COVID activity under speculative future scenarios. Since February 2021, multiple teams of modelers have participated in 17 rounds of scenarios exploring the impact of new variants, non-pharmaceutical interventions, and varying levels of vaccination uptake and efficacy.
A new publication in Nature Communication provides a comprehensive evaluation of fourteen rounds of publicly-released results from February 2021-November 2002. Led by recent PhD graduate Emily Howerton of Penn State, Evaluation of the US COVID-19 Scenario Modeling Hub for informing pandemic response under uncertainty tackles the complex question of evaluating these scenario projections and using them to inform pandemic response.
A summary discussion of this paper can be found on The Conversation: Pooling multiple models during COVID-19 pandemic provided more reliable projections about an uncertain future.
The MIDAS Coordination Center provides infrastructure support for the Scenario Modeling Hub, including developing and hosting the website and managing data validation processes.
