Data scientist Youyang Gu, who is the creator of a website widely used to monitor the spread of the coronavirus, estimates that the spread of the virus is not quite as prevalent as it was in March and April, but added that the US is unquestionably in the midst of a second wave.
Gu's model is among several the CDC uses to come up with official government projections on the spread of the virus.
Based on a lack of testing early in the pandemic, Gu’s team estimates that there were around 250,000 new infections of the coronavirus each day in late March and early April. By July 1, that figure dropped in half.
But in recent weeks, the spread of the virus has gained steam. Based on Gu’s projections, he estimates there are nearly 200,000 new infections of the virus each day. Based on Gu’s projections, he expects the virus to peak out with 265,000 new infections per day in early August.
“We updated our infections estimate to closer match the observed data. We now estimate there to be around 180k new infections per day in the US, 4 to 5 times higher than the number of reported cases. Because we use only deaths in our model, we believe this estimate may still be an underestimate of the true prevalence,” Yu said.
On Wednesday, there were more than 50,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, but Yu’s projection has the number of likely infections nearly four times higher.
But Yu notes that there is a lag time between infections and when cases become fatal.
To view the projections, click here.