New York state is launching a dashboard that will provide data on COVID-19 in public schools. This dataset promises to be much more complete than any other state’s reporting on COVID-19 in schools. But I haven’t been able to closely examine these data yet, because the dashboard has yet to come online.
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On September 3, 2020, the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) posted a county-level testing dataset. The dataset specifically provides test positivity rates for every U.S. county, for the week of August 27 to September 2. This is huge. It’s, like, I had to lie down after I saw it, huge. No federal health agency has posted county-level testing data since the pandemic started.
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The most recent state to go through a dashboarrevision is South Carolina. In late August, the state released a new dashboard, called the County-Level Dashboard, and reorganized much of its information on COVID-19 demographics and other metrics.
Read MoreFeatured sources for Sept. 6 include demographic data, long-term care data, and N-95 respirators.
Read MoreI recently had the honor of speaking to Bara Vaida, from the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ), about my work at Stacker, the COVID Tracking Project, and this newsletter.
Read MoreThis past Tuesday, the Florida Department of Health (DOH) announced that the department would stop working with Quest Diagnostics. Quest is one of the biggest COVID-19 test providers in the nation, with test centers and labs set up in many states. The company claimed in a statement to the Tampa Bay Times that it has “provided more COVID-19 testing on behalf of the citizens of Florida than any other laboratory.”
Read MoreSince last week’s issue, four more forms of official state reporting on COVID-19 in schools have come to my attention. Plus, national sources on reopening plans and college cases.
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How many people in the U.S. have been tested for COVID-19? This should be a simple question, but instead, we have 50 state public health departments wh report their local testing results in 50 different ways. Different departments have different practices for collecting and cleaning their test results, and beyond that, they report these results using different units, or the definitive magnitudes used to describe values.
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