Epidemiologists projecting virus's impact on state health-care systems begin to make estimates at the county level

CovidActNow map; gray areas have insufficient data to make projections. (For a slightly larger version, click on it)

A group of epidemiologists have formed a working group called CovidActNow to project how the coronavirus pandemic would affect health-care systems. Its first projections were state by state; now it is beginning to make projections for counties where sufficient data are available.

The state-by-state projections are updated frequently, if not daily. They show when a state's hospitals would be overloaded, depending on compliance with social-distancing orders. Here is the chart for Kentucky, which shows that its hospitals would be overloaded June 11 if compliance is poor but would be far from overloaded at the peak if compliance is strict:

The state-by-state projections also include estimates of the number of covid-19 deaths under both circumstances. In Kentucky, it estimates 13,000 with poor compliance, 2,000 with strict compliance. Gov. Andy Beshear has used a simplified version of the chart to justify his social-distance orders.