- COVID-19 Vaccination Equity: A new page of the CDC’s COVID Data Tracker allows users to compare a county’s vaccination rate to its vulnerability, using the CDC Social Vulnerability Index—unless that county is in Texas or Hawaii. For more on the Social Vulnerability Index, see this CDD post. The interactive map employs a unique two-tone color scheme, about which my girlfriend (who has graphic design expertise) said, “The purple loses me a little.”
- US COVID-19 Vaccination Tracking: If you’d like to scroll through a county-level vaccine dashboard that actually includes Texas, researchers from the Bansal Lab at Georgetown University have you covered. This dashboard includes data from state public health departments to supplement the CDC’s incomplete reporting. The Bansal Lab researchers also recently published a new analysis, identifying clusters of under-vaccinated counties that are likely to seed outbreaks; I wrote about this analysis for the Daily Mail.
- The human genetic architecture of COVID-19: Since spring 2020, an international group of geneticists have worked to analyze DNA from COVID-19 patients. A major manuscript on these efforts was accepted to Nature and posted online last week (it’s still going through edits); see the supplementary information section for extensive genetic data. And for more backstory on the project, see this article by STAT’s Megan Molteni.
- Nebraska’s COVID-19 dashboard: Is the latest to get discontinued, as part of the trend in states cutting down on their COVID-19 reporting (even though the pandemic is far from over). Unlike Florida, which recently switched from a dashboard to weekly reports, Nebraska is not promising any regular reporting schedule. A note on the public health agency’s website reads: “The State of Nebraska COVID-19 Dashboard is no longer available as of June 30, 2021. Any future updates regarding coronavirus will be provided in news releases and through other means.”
