Projections and early-warning signals of a second wave of the COVID-19 epidemic in Illinois

  1. Zachary J. Weiner
  2. George N. Wong
  3. Ahmed Elbanna
  4. Alexei V. Tkachenko
  5. Sergei Maslov
  6. Nigel Goldenfeld

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Abstract

We present two different scenarios for a second wave of the COVID-19 epidemic in Illinois and simulate them using our previously described age-of-infection model, calibrated to real-time hospital and deaths data. In the first scenario we assume that the parameters of the second wave in Illinois would be similar to those currently observed in other states such as Arizona, Florida, and Texas. We estimate doubling times of hospitalizations and test positivity in all states with relevant publicly available data and calculate the corresponding effective reproduction numbers for Illinois. These parameters are remarkably consistent in states with rapidly growing epidemics. We conjecture that the emergence of the second wave of the epidemic in these states can be attributed to superspreading events at large parties, crowded bars, and indoor dining. In our second, more optimistic scenario we assume changes in Illinois state policy would result in successful mitigation of superspreading events and thus would lower the effective reproduction number to the value observed in late June 2020. In this case our calculations show effective suppression of the second wave in Illinois. Our analysis also suggests that the logarithmic time derivatives of COVID-19 hospitalizations and case positivity can serve as a simple but strong early-warning signal of the onset of a second wave.

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    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.07.06.20147868: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.07.06.20147868v1 on medRxiv