On June 30, Nebraska’s public health department discontinued its COVID-19 dashboard. The dashboard had provided daily updates for cases, deaths, vaccinations, and other metrics. After June 30, it was replaced with a stripped-down “Weekly Data Update,” providing a few major metrics, such as the cases reported and vaccine doses administered in the past week. This update is posted every Wednesday.
When I checked on Nebraska yesterday for an update of my vaccine annotations page, I was shocked to find that the state’s Weekly Update has been pared down even further. It now includes just two metrics: variants of concern and vaccine breakthroughs. Nebraska’s health department is reporting: 1) the total cases identified as variants of concern in the state, and 2) total cases, hospitalizations, and deaths split by “fully vaccinated” and “not fully vaccinated.”
Compared to the detailed dashboard this state used to produce, this weekly update is incredibly sparse. It reminds me of a state COVID-19 data page from the early days of the pandemic—like, March 2020. If any local journalists from Nebraska are reading: I am so sorry.
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