UT Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium
An interdisciplinary network of researchers and health professionals building models to detect, project, and combat COVID-19
View the latest COVID-19 National Projections
The UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium unites scientists, social scientists, and engineers in developing innovative models that advance the surveillance, forecasting and mitigation of this unprecedented and elusive threat. Led by Professor Lauren Ancel Meyers, the consortium is actively supporting community workers and health professionals on the front line of the fight against COVID-19 and providing decision-support analyses for local, state and national leaders striving to protect the health and well-being of our society.
To learn more about UT COVID-19 Modeling Consortium models and research please visit our Publications and Projections webpages.
COVID-19 Modeling Consortium News
UT Epidemiologists Launch New Dashboards to Track COVID-19 Across Texas Communities
The University of Texas at Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium has launched a new online dashboard to track the spread and impact of the virus, including in hospitals across the state of Texas with detailed information for 22 different areas. LEARN MORE
Early Spread of COVID-19 Appears Far Greater Than Initially Reported
In a new paper in The Lancet’s open-access journal EClinicalMedicine, epidemiological researchers from The University of Texas at Austin estimated COVID-19 to be far more widespread in Wuhan, China, and Seattle, Washington, weeks ahead of lockdown measures in each city. LEARN MORE
The Risk That Students Could Arrive at School With the Coronavirus
The University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium offers educators and parents a new framework that uses community prevalence of COVID-19 to determine the risks of the virus being introduced in any school. The framework, published in a new interactive from The New York Times, was shared in a report delivered to Texas decision makers and cited in a report on school reopenings from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. It helps leaders walk through a process of determining priorities, reviewing mitigation strategies and monitoring data with clear guideposts for assessing the risk is at any given time that a student will show up to school infected. LEARN MORE
New Tool to Guide Decisions on Social Distancing Uses Hospital Data and Emphasizes Protecting the Vulnerable
Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and colleagues have developed epidemiological models that project the spread of COVID-19 and found that school closures in the spring, in and of themselves, only slightly flattened the pandemic curve. Early implementation of strict social-distancing measures, such as shelter-in-place orders, were critical to slowing spread and preventing overwhelming surges in COVID-19 hospitalizations, the researchers explain in a new paper in the journal Emerging Infectious Disease. The team’s models predict how the timing and effectiveness of social distancing impact the spread of COVID-19 and the resulting levels of hospitalizations, patients in intensive care, ventilator needs and deaths for the Austin, Texas area. LEARN MORE
New Dashboard Projects COVID-19 Infections and Hospitalizations in Austin Metro Area
The University of Texas COVID-19 Modeling Consortium has developed a new model that tracks the transmission of COVID-19 in the Austin Metro Area and projects the future of COVID-19 healthcare needs. They are making the model predictions available through the new Austin COVID-19 Dashboard in an effort to help decision makers and citizens to gain basic insight into the rapidly changing risks of COVID-10 and to anticipate surges in healthcare demand. The dashboard provides daily estimates for the rate of COVID-19 spread and projects imminent increases or decreases in COVID-19 hospitalizations and ICU patients. The model incorporates epidemiological characteristics of the disease, demographic information for the Austin area, and mobility data from anonymous cell phone tracing. It can be easily adapted to track the pandemic in other communities based on local COVID-19 hospital admissions data. LEARN MORE
Hoping for a COVID-19 antiviral that limits virus spread
As the COVID-19 pandemic claims hundreds of thousands of lives and wreaks economic havoc worldwide, scientists are racing to develop antivirals that reduce the fatality of the disease. LEARN MORE
COVID-19 Drug Development Could Benefit from Approach Used Against Flu
A new study from researchers at The University of Texas at Austin has found that some antivirals are useful for more than helping sick people get better — they also can prevent thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of virus cases if used in the early stages of infection. LEARN MORE
For Each Day’s Delay in Social Distancing, a COVID-19 Outbreak Lasts Days Longer
A new analysis of COVID-19 outbreaks in 58 cities has found that places that took longer to begin implementing social distancing measures spent more time with the virus rapidly spreading than others that acted more quickly. LEARN MORE
Updated: New Model Forecasts When States, Cities Likely to See Peak in COVID-19 Deaths
Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have released a model that projects COVID-19 deaths for all 50 U.S. states using geolocation data from cellphones to determine the impact of social distancing within each state is showing it may be weeks until deaths peak for many states and metropolitan areas. LEARN MORE
New Model Forecasts 9 States Likely to See Peak in COVID-19 Deaths by End of April
Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have released a model that provides a daily estimate of fatalities from COVID-19 in the United States for the coming weeks LEARN MORE
Pandemic Model Shows Importance of Social Distancing in 22 Texas Cities
A new pandemic model of COVID-19 shows the positive role social distancing can play in preventing the spread of the illness in areas across the state. LEARN MORE
Coronavirus Spreads Quickly and Sometimes Before People Have Symptoms, Study Finds
Infectious disease researchers at The University of Texas at Austin studying the novel coronavirus were able to identify how quickly the virus can spread, a factor that may help public health officials in their efforts at containment. LEARN MORE
Researchers Say Spread of Coronavirus Extends Far Beyond China’s Quarantine Zone
Infectious disease researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and other institutions in Hong Kong, mainland China and France have concluded there is a high probability that the deadly Wuhan coronavirus spread beyond Wuhan and other quarantined cities before Chinese officials were able to put a quarantine in place. LEARN MORE