New COVID-19 dashboard just for the US offers rich, county-level data

Johns Hopkins University on Monday, April 13, released a new version of its wildly popular COVID-19 dashboard that focuses solely on the United States and includes rich, county-level data and infographics not seen in the global version.

While the initial landing page looks much like the global version, clicking through to the county-specific infographics adds extensive context to each location’s situation. Each county’s cases, deaths, and fatality rate are displayed alongside state-level data on testing, cases, deaths, and the fatality rate.

The infographic also contains critical information on county-level healthcare resources, including staffed hospital beds and ICU beds, as well as mitigation policies that have been put in place.

Last, the pandemic data is put in context to the area’s demographics, including a bar graph showing the health insurance status of residents by age group. There’s also basic data on the local population’s size, race, and ethnicity breakdown; poverty status; and the number of people over age 65.

Back on the landing page, viewers can see countrywide trends with color-coded county-level data on confirmed cases, confirmed cases by population, deaths, and fatality rate.

In addition the new, standalone dashboard for the United States, JHU also announced that it has made improvements to the original global version. It added state-level US testing, hospitalization rates, and case curves to the global map. It’s also adding global incidence and mortality rates.

“Johns Hopkins’ goal is to make this data as publicly and widely available as possible,” the university said in a press release.

The global dashboard, originally released in January, has become wildly popular amid the pandemic. It is used the world over by members of the public as well as by policymakers and public health researchers. According to a recent report in Nature Index, the site was built by a graduate student in just a few hours after a “spur-of-the-moment decision.” It has now been getting more than a billion hits per day.

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