A closely watched model of the coronavirus pandemic showed a dramatic shift for the better in Louisiana overnight, but changes to the methodology used by researchers suggest that it might be too early to celebrate.

Over the past week, projections released by the University of Washington's Institute for Health Metrics have become a go-to source for those seeking a sense of how well states are faring in their battle to contain the virus, also known as COVID-19. The model has fueled conversations among armchair epidemiologists and is one of the sources being used by the White House to come up with its own estimates of how high the death toll could climb.

An update to the model late Sunday night appeared to provide some good news for the country and, specifically, for Louisiana.

According to the latest projections, Louisiana has already passed the peak for both the number of lives the virus will take each day and the resources such as hospital beds and ventilators that will be needed to keep coronavirus patients alive.

But there is reason for viewing those projections with extreme caution, and there's at least some evidence they are not in step with current reality on the ground in Louisiana. At the very least, more days of data are likely needed to determine whether the model is accurately describing the progression of the pandemic in the state.

The University of Washington researchers make their projections based on statistical modeling of deaths attributed to the coronavirus. Deaths are considered to be a more concrete statistic than the total number of cases, since the number of cases identified is highly dependent on how widespread testing is in a community.

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The number of deaths per day was fed into a model that accounts for how many social distancing measures had been put in place in each state and, until Sunday, used data from Wuhan, China, to predict how long it would be until the death toll peaked. Those calculations were then used to project how many resources would be needed to keep patients, both those fighting the coronavirus and those suffering from other ailments, alive.

The researchers had been putting out daily updates based on the latest toll from the virus until April 1, when they took time to update the assumptions underlying the model. Before then, the model had predicted Louisiana would see its deaths and resource use peak this week. Now, the model suggests we passed that peak on Wednesday.

But both the new assumptions and the timing of the update may complicate the picture.

The researchers have not yet released all the details of their new model, but they have described the changes in broad terms.

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For Louisiana, which has been restricting various non-essential businesses and gatherings since March 16, the biggest change appears to be an adjustment in how long they predict it will take those social distancing mandates to be effective.

The new version of the model now incorporates data from Italy and Spain, where deaths peaked far more quickly after social distancing measures were put in place than they did in Wuhan. Exactly how the data from those locations is being incorporated is not yet clear, though all of that information would result in projections showing a shorter time for Louisiana to begin to see a decline the number of new deaths it records each day.

In Italy and Spain, at least some of the mandates were far more restrictive than any measures being taken in Louisiana or elsewhere in the country. It is not yet clear how the difference in the aggressiveness of the policies will play into the length between the time they were implemented and the peak in the fatalities caused by the virus.

The newer version of the model attempts to better weigh the impact of various social distancing policies, and researchers have said they will provide a fuller explanation of their methodology in a paper that will be posted on Tuesday.

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Unfortunately, the model's current projections are out of step with the number of deaths seen in Louisiana on Sunday, though it is also too soon to tell what the long-term trend will be.

Louisiana has seen the number of deaths attributed to coronavirus rise on three of the last four days. That includes Sunday when 68 deaths were recorded, the highest number of deaths the state has seen on a single day.

On the other hand, figures released by the state Department of Health on Monday appeared to track more closely with the predictions of the newer model.

Louisiana recorded 35 new deaths due to the coronavirus on Monday. The newer version of the model predicted there would be between 14 and 99 deaths on Monday while the older version predicted somewhere between 32 and 98 people would lose their lives.

The number of people who die each day is a volatile number, and a few days of data is likely not enough to establish a long-term trend. However, it doesn't appear that the new version model is a better fit for the actual deaths seen in Louisiana than the previous version.

Additional caution is warranted because of when the researchers last updated the data for Louisiana in their model.

The final datapoints used in the projections were taken from Friday. While the number of deaths fell the next day, as the model would predict, they do not account for Sunday's dramatic rise.

Projections are also out of step when it comes to the resources the model predicts will be needed to keep the state's healthcare systems from being overwhelmed by the influx of coronavirus patients.

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According to the newer version of the model, Louisiana should have expected to have between 182 and 367 patients on ventilators on Sunday and between 751 and 1,620 patients in hospital beds. In fact, the state reported 561 patients on ventilators and 1,803 patients in hospital beds on Sunday.