With Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years coming up, Coronavirus numbers in the United States have the potential to increase dramatically. United States President-elect Joe Biden has signalled that fighting the COVID-19 pandemic will be an immediate priority for his administration.
The President-elect recently announced a coronavirus advisory board of infectious disease researchers and former public health advisers along with an updated strategy that will include increases in testing and contact tracing, as well as transparent communication.
The challenge for President-elect Biden is that Inauguration Day is still almost two months away.
A Washington University in St. Louis COVID-19 forecasting model predicts that the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases are likely to increase to 20 million by the end of January, nearly doubling the current level of 11.4 million cases.
The Washington University in St. Louis COVID-19 forecasting model, which accurately forecasted the rate of COVID-19 growth over the summer of 2020, was developed by Olin Business School’s Meng Liu, Raphael Thomadsen and Song Yao.
“One of the key reasons for the increased accuracy of this model over other COVID-19 forecasts is that this model accounts for the fact that people live in interconnected social networks rather than interacting mostly with random groups of strangers,” said Thomadsen, professor of marketing. “This allows the model to forecast that growth will not continue at exponential rates for long periods of time, as classic COVID-19 forecasts predict.”
An interactive online version of the model also allows users to observe the impact different levels of social distancing will have on the spread of COVID-19. The current social distancing reflects an approximate 60% return to normalcy, as compared with the level of social distancing before the pandemic. If we continue, as a nation, at the current level of social distancing, the model forecasts that we are likely to reach 20 million cases before the end of January 2021.

The upcoming holidays will bring greater uncertainty to the epidemic, people's social distance will continue to shrink, and the total number of COVID cases will continue to increase. How to effectively control the spread of the epidemic will be the number one test facing President Biden.