Fig. 3

Heatmap of the WCIS for 4-week-ahead hospitalization forecasts, performed by the Forecast Hub’s Ensemble model. The central and largest grid shows the most granular results: region- and time-specific performance. On the right and lower sides of the grid are average performances over time and space, respectively. The shaded line plot at the bottom of the figure is the target hospitalization variable aggregated across all regions. Note that its domain is aligned exactly with those of the time-dependent heatmaps above, to provide insight into the trends of the overall pandemic alongside the more granular information in the heatmaps. (See Additional file 1 for heatmaps over differing prediction horizons)