The Keep Virginia Safe Tournament is now on its third and final round, with new questions opened November 24th, December 1st, and December 8th.

And in recognition of the impact that the forecasting community's efforts are having for the long-term wellbeing of the people of Virginia, the Virginia Department of Health has generously authorized a substantial increase to the prize pool, now at $2500.

Since March 2020, Metaculus has been providing forecasting and modeling resources to public health professionals and public policy experts as they have navigated critical decisions about COVID-19 interventions in communities around the world.

Public health officials in Virginia are currently weighing key decisions, with the following questions and others under careful consideration:

How many new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths can we expect in this new Delta-driven wave?
How will the levels and causes of vaccine hesitancy change over the coming months?
When will a vaccine be authorized for children under 12?
When will a vaccine receive full FDA approval?
How many school districts might participate in weekly screening/testing programs?
Will there be new variants capable of overtaking Delta?

This Tournament will directly address these key scientific and policy questions by aggregating knowledge from many experts and forecasters.

The tournament will run from April 2021 until April 2022, with two types of questions:

Calibration Questions: these close before the end date of the tournament, and are used to rank you in the tournament
Long-term Questions: in order to probe far into the future, and build the Metaculus data set on predictions, we are including a number of far-reaching questions that may not resolve for many years.

Thank you for your contributions to this initiative, and as always, Happy Predicting!