By Tim Mastro

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the launch of the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics Tuesday night, which seeks to act as the equivalent of the National Weather Service for infectious diseases.

CDC said in a press release its goal for the center is to improve outbreak response using infectious disease modeling and analytics to provide support to leaders at the federal, state and local levels. The program will aim to provide insights about infectious disease events to inform individual decision making.

“I am excited we have launched CDC’s Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics,” CDC director Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky said in a statement. “This new center is an example of how we are modernizing the ways we prepare for and respond to public health threats. I am proud of the work that has come out of this group thus far and eager to see continued innovation in the use of data, modeling and analytics to improve outbreak responses.”

The Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics began its planning stage in August of 2021 and had a chance in December to assemble models with several academic partners to anticipate the omicron wave of COVID-19 and generated early estimates of omicron severity.

More information on the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics, including forecasting updates, scenario hubs, publications and preprints, is available at www.cdc.gov/CFA.

Delawareans can still monitor the current COVID-19 situation by visiting the Delaware Division of Public Health data dashboard at www,myhealthycommunity.dhss.delaware.gov/locations/state.

According to DPH’s data, Delaware is averaging 167.9 new cases of COVID-19 per day over the last week. This is the highest seven-day rolling average since Feb. 22 but still well below recent surges which saw the state averaging more than 300 cases per day in mid-February and as high as in the 3,000s in early January.

The number of individuals hospitalized with COVID-19 has fluctuate between 20 and 40 over the last 30 days. DPH reported 37 hospitalizations in Wednesday’s update. Hospitalizations have remained below the 100 mark since Feb. 25 after the omicron surge.

No new COVID-19-related deaths were announced by DPH on Wednesday. Delaware has recorded a total of 260,735 positive COVID-19 cases and 2,896 COVID-19-related deaths since March of 2020.