Tracking Our COVID-19 Response

Today is the last evening we are updating COVID Exit Strategy.

As a country, we are at peak cases, peak hospitalizations, and peak deaths. Our map continued to get darker and darker red. At this point, we'd have to add 2-3 more extreme shades to describe how significant the spread is in our communities.

To get through this crisis, the public needs an even more local view of how the virus is spreading to make informed decisions. The public also needs the federal government to take its place as the primary source for how this virus is affecting the country.

For local data and alerts about your community, use Covid Act Now. Our team is thrilled to be joining forces with them to continue to keep the public informed.

For data from the federal government, see the Community Profile Report produced by HHS, CDC, ASPR, and USDS. It was released two days ago and will be updated daily.

Today HHS, CDC, and ASPR released their internal documents of how they are tracking the spread of COVID across the country. This is the most comprehensive national dataset on how this virus is affecting our communities.

Read HHS's Blogpost. & See the report and dataset.

This open data release exemplifies what our government is capable of doing when it is called on to respond to a pandemic. It is a travesty that the current administration has kept the career civil service from sharing this data with the public.

We added "Estimated Active Cases" to our main table. This data comes from covid19-projections.com, which is work by Youyang Gu to estimate the number of active COVID-19 cases from the new cases reported in a state.

"Our infections estimates include all infected individuals of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, not just those that took a COVID-19 test and tested positive. As of November, we estimate the true number of infected individuals in the US to be roughly 2-5x higher than the reported cases (20-50% detection rate)"

You can learn more about the method of calculating this metric by Youyang here.

And as a reminder, updates to COVID Exit Strategy will continue until December 20th. We've joined forces with COVID Act Now and will be making future updates there.

Since April, our small team has been focused on tracking how states are doing on critical public health measures like the spread of cases, hospital system readiness, and the robustness of testing.
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We focused on aggregating and presenting data that was made publicly available by states and the federal government. The work that you see here would not be possible without the data collected and produced by The COVID Tracking Project, Covid Act Now, CMU's U.S. Symptom Survey, COVID-19 State Policy Team from UW, CDC, and HHS.
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Our intention was to fill in a gap left by the federal government: to connect the data being reported about the virus with guidance and thresholds on the severity of the spread.
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As it stands today, the official White House Coronavirus Task Force continues to keep its valuable weekly state-by-state report private. Because of that, we've used this platform to advocate for more COVID-related data to be made available by the federal government. A public crisis requires a unified public response. A unified public response requires public data.
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Although HHS and CDC have begun sharing more and more datasets, the Administration continues to hesitate to share how the guidance CDC is issuing connects with the data being reported. This missing link has created an environment where COVID-19 is considered a hoax and the public is not taking the proper health precautions. It’s not too late for this Administration to begin sharing its reports. There are 48 days till the Inauguration and every day matters.
 
There's a hunger for this information. Over a million people have used our site’s dashboards with thousands coming back more than 200 times. The site has been a resource for federal agencies, state governments, journalists, businesses, and the public to guide reopening efforts and travel restrictions.

We’ve been cited by national media outlets such as The Economist, NPR, PBS, Fox News, New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, The Hill, Forbes, Bloomberg, Barron's, Wall Street Journal, Kaiser Family Foundation, AP, Newsweek, CNBC, Vox, and STAT.
 
The public demands and needs more real-time information about how this virus is spreading.
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Road Ahead
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As the crisis intensified in July our map went red. We added a new shade of darker red to capture the new highs of the second peak. Now as we are facing this third wave, our map is deep red and is not capturing the extremes being faced by a handful of states.
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For an effective public health response, a thoroughly red national map is not as useful as what is happening in your local community. Over the past 3 months, we've been working with Covid Act Now on identifying new data sources and aligning on thresholds the key indicators. The road ahead is on their site and platform. Using Covid Act Now, you can zoom into the county you live in and get local alerts. It has been a joy working with them and their incredible team.
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We'll continue to make updates to COVID Exit Strategy up to December 20th, 2020. If there's something on our site that you are not seeing at Covid Act Now, send us a note: info@covidactnow.org.
 
It has been a privilege playing a part in informing the public. This is a moment for us to say thank you to the volunteers that made this site possible. For a handful, it is an opportunity to transition. But for the others, we are thrilled to call Covid Act Now our new team and we look forward to keeping you informed.
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- Ryan, Cyrus, and Marta

Earlier today, CovidExitStrategy.org, United States of Care, Resolve to Save Lives, U.S. Digital Response, COVID Act Now, COVID State Policy dot org, and the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy held a press webinar outlining new data on COVID-19 hospitalizations, data challenges, and the current state of mask mandates.

You can view the video of the press conference here.