Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

Virus Numbers Downgraded Again for Tennessee in IHME Model

Tennessee’s coronavirus peak and fatality numbers got another downgrade Monday from the widely used epidemic model from the University of Washington.

The numbers from the university’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) have been used by the White House and state and local governments across the country. It has long predicted a virus peak here in mid-to-late April.

But the model has been recently diminished as too optimistic after a Tennessee-specific model was developed by health care officials from Vanderbilt University in Nashville. That new model holds that the state’s peak won’t come until mid-May or mid-June under different scenarios. Updated numbers from the Vanderbilt model are not publicly updated.

Vanderbilt University

Read about Vanderbilt’s model here:
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The IHME model predicts the peak of cases here will come Thursday. On that day, the model predicts the state will need 632 regular hospitals beds, 151 ICU beds, and 137 ventilators. Under these predictions, the state’s health care facilities will not be swamped with virus patients. Needs for health care facilities here will begin to lower significantly by next week, according to the IHME.

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The state’s daily death number has already peaked, according to the model. Monday was the deadliest day for the virus here with 20 deaths predicted, it said. The Tennessee Department of Health said Monday the state’s total death toll was 109. The department had not updated the figure as of Tuesday morning. Check back here for updated figures.

Also, the state’s total death toll was lowered from 587 last week to 481 on Monday in the updated model. IHME’s first predicted 3,422 Tennesseans would die from the virus by mid-May.

IHME’s predictions are all based on the assumption of full social distancing through May 2020.
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For a look at coronavirus cases in Tennessee over time, check out this infographic made by Knoxville’s WATE-TV reporter Jack Lail:

Virus Numbers Downgraded Again for Tennessee in IHME Model

About 1,067 Tennesseans will die from coronavirus.

Tennessee won’t run short of hospital beds or ICU beds during the coronavirus pandemic and the state can expect to see 26 deaths per day until a peak of 35 deaths in one day on April 26th.

Those are projections released late last week by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine.

The numbers and the group are same ones name-checked in Sunday’s Rose Garden virus update by Debbie Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force. Birx said her group of government scientists was unaware the IHME group was also working on coronavirus projections. But she said the two groups “ended up at the same numbers.”

IHME, led by professor Chris Murray, predicted that the need for hospital beds, ICU beds, and ventilators across the country will far exceed the current capacity for coronavirus patients as soon as the second week of April.

Nationally, the wave of virus deaths in the U.S. are likely to persist into July, if people adhere to social distancing measures. Over the next four months, the U.S. is likely to experience about 81,000 deaths related to the virus. IHME estimates range from between 38,000 and 162,000 deaths.

”The trajectory of the pandemic will change – and dramatically for the worse – if people ease up on social distancing or relax with other precautions,” Murray said in a statement.

The Tennessee figures assume that the state had not issued a stay-at-home order, which Governor Bill Lee did Monday afternoon. It also assumed that all education facilities weren’t closed, non-essential businesses weren’t closed, and that travel had not been severely limited.

In all, IHME’s figures show that the state will lose 1,067 lives to coronavirus. The final death is projected to occur on June 6th.

Here’s a breakdown of the numbers needed to respond to coronavirus in Tennessee, according to the IHME:
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Here’s what all those figures look like on the curve:

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Here is the Tennessee’s peak death toll curve by day:

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Here’s the state’s total death toll curve:

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“We hope these forecasts will help leaders of medical systems figure out innovative ways to deliver high-quality care to those who will need their services in the coming weeks,” Murray said.

Click here to see all of IHME’s projections for Tennessee, every other U.S. state, and the U.S. as a whole.

The federal government is keeping its own projections private, according to a report in The Washington Post.