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Data models from the University of Virginia Biocomplexity Institute are suggesting the peak of the omicron variant is near. All 35 health districts across Virginia are currently reporting a surge in this variant of the coronavirus.

Washington, DC, metro-area stakeholders will soon have a new tool at their fingertips to inform equitable and sustainable growth, a critical issue for a region where more than 5.5 million people now live and strong growth is expected over the next 25 years. The unique data platform will emerge from the University of Virginia Biocomplexity Institute’s launch of a Social Impact Data Commons, an open curated knowledge repository that will co-locate data from various sources, including public datasets, administrative records, and private sources focused on the region.

Bryan Lewis, a research associate professor at the Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative at the University of Virginia, has used models to predict future COVID-19 cases. From recent model runs, Lewis believes the omicron variant will become the dominant strain in the state before the end of the year.

The decline is worrying health officials as colder weather fuels new cases of COVID-19.

According to a recent report from the University of Virginia’s Biocomplexity Institute, which collaborates with state health officials, the VDH is deploying up to 25 wastewater monitoring sites across the commonwealth.

Srini Venkatramanan, research assistant professor at the Biocomplexity Institute, weighs in on the recent case numbers across California, Florida, and Texas. 

For much of the pandemic, the Biocomplexity Institute has been modeling the likely trajectory of COVID-19 in Virginia using mobility data, case rates, vaccination numbers and a slew of other statistics that can predict how, where and how fast the virus will continue to spread. With many Virginians — and public health officials — already preparing for holiday gatherings, understanding potential risks could be crucial for decision-making.

This article discusses how the University of Virginia’s Biocomplexity Institute is helping local health officials select mobile vaccine sites. Our data dashboards and reports include information on mobility, drawn from anonymized cell phone data collected by a company called SafeGraph, showing where and when Virginians were traveling to help understand the impact of safety restrictions.

Rather than a shut-down, what if we knew which places to close during a pandemic to curtail the spread of a virus and lessen the economic impact to a locality? A model showing how this can be done, created by researchers at the University of Virginia Biocomplexity Institute and Stanford and Northwestern universities, has won a Best Paper Award in the Applied Research track at the recently concluded ACM KDD conference.

Regarding the current COVID case data in the U.S., Srini Venkatramanan, Research Assistant Professor at the Biocomplexity Institute, told Newsweek that from the latest set of updates, short-term forecasts are pointed downwards, "hinting that we may have peaked as far as the Delta wave is concerned, at the national scale."