Medicine:COVID Tracking Project

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COVID Tracking Project
The COVID Tracking Project screenshot.png
Type of site
Collaborative volunteer-run effort
Created byAlexis Madrigal
EditorErin Kissane
Key peopleRobinson Meyer, Jeff Hammerbacher[1]
Website{{{1}}}
LaunchedMarch 7, 2020; 4 years ago (2020-03-07)
Current statusInactive
Content license
Data and website content are published under a CC BY 4.0 license.
Short description: Collaborative online project aimed at tracking COVID-19 in the United States

The COVID Tracking Project was a collaborative volunteer-run effort to track the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. It maintained a daily-updated dataset of state-level information related to the outbreak, including counts of the number of cases, tests, hospitalizations, and deaths, the racial and ethnic demographic breakdowns of cases and deaths, and cases and deaths in long-term care facilities.[2][3][4]

Data was updated by hand from state health department webpages, press conferences, and outreach to state health officials.[5][6] The project reported data from all states, the District of Columbia, and five US territories.

History

In early March 2020, two journalists, Robinson Meyer and Alexis Madrigal, started constructing a COVID-19 tracking spreadsheet for their investigation in The Atlantic, after not finding a unified official source for testing data in the United States. Around the same time, data scientist Jeff Hammerbacher was independently working on a similar tracking spreadsheet, and the COVID Tracking Project was formed when these two projects merged on March 7, 2020, and the public was invited to contribute. Madrigal leads the project, and Erin Kissane joined as its managing editor; Hammerbacher remains an advisor and volunteer.[7]

The project eventually grew to about 30 paid staffers and 250-300 active volunteers.[8] Data continued to be entered using a spreadsheet, with an API developed for easier public sharing. It expanded the range of data points it was gathering as they were reported by a majority of states.[9]

In May 2020, the CDC released their first dashboard with state-by-state breakdowns of cases and tests. The project published a comparison of the data compiled by the CDC with the data reported by the states.[10]

On February 1, 2021, the organization announced that it would cease its data compilation activities and release its final daily update on March 7, 2021, citing the improvement of government COVID-19 data.[11] On July 29, 2021, the University of California, San Francisco and The Atlantic announced that the COVID Tracking Project's archives would become part of the university library's permanent collection.[12]

Impact

The COVID Tracking Project's data and analysis became a definitive source of COVID-19 data for the United States.[13] The data was used in over 80,000 news reports and 1,000 academic articles.[14][15] Many federal agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have cited data from the COVID Tracking Project, as have both the Trump administration and the Biden administration.[16][17][18] In June 2020, the CDC released a report stating that The COVID Tracking Project's race and ethnicity data may be more complete than the agency's dataset.[19] The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices used the project's long-term care data to inform its phased vaccine allocation recommendations.[20]

The COVID Tracking Project received multiple awards for its work, including a Sigma Delta Chi Award for Specialized Journalism Site, a Sigma Award for Data Journalism, and a New York University American Journalism Online Award for Best Data Visualization.[21][22][23]

References

  1. ↑ "About Us". https://covidtracking.com/about. 
  2. ↑ Jin, Beatrice (March 16, 2020). "How many coronavirus cases have been found in each U.S. state" (in en). Politico. https://politico.com/interactives/2020/coronavirus-testing-by-state-chart-of-new-cases/. 
  3. ↑ Sohn, Emily (March 24, 2020). "How the COVID Tracking Project fills the public health data gap" (in en). Columbia Journalism Review. https://www.cjr.org/the_profile/covid-tracking-project.php. 
  4. ↑ "The Long-Term Care COVID Tracker | Technical Resources" (in en). https://asprtracie.hhs.gov/technical-resources/resource/9283/the-long-term-care-covid-tracker. 
  5. ↑ Buchanan, Larry; Lai, K. K. Rebecca; McCann, Allison (March 17, 2020). "U.S. Lags in Coronavirus Testing After Slow Response to Outbreak" (in en-US). The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/03/17/us/coronavirus-testing-data.html. 
  6. ↑ "Analysis & updates | How We Entered COVID-19 Testing and Outcomes Data Every Day for a Year" (in en). https://covidtracking.com/analysis-updates/how-we-entered-covid-19-testing-outcomes-data. 
  7. ↑ "About The COVID Tracking Project" (in en). https://covidtracking.com/. 
  8. ↑ Cohen, Rachel (2021-02-19). "Exit Interview: How the COVID Tracking Project Stepped Up When The Trump Administration Didn't" (in en-US). https://www.gq.com/story/covid-tracking-project-exit-interview. 
  9. ↑ "Analysis & updates: How We Made The COVID Tracking Project" (in en). https://covidtracking.com/analysis-updates/category/how-we-made-the-project. 
  10. ↑ Madrigal, Robinson Meyer, Alexis C. (2020-05-17). "State and Federal Data on COVID-19 Testing Don't Match Up" (in en-US). https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/05/cdc-publishing-covid-19-test-data/611764/. 
  11. ↑ "Analysis & updates | It's Time: The COVID Tracking Project Will Soon Come to an End" (in en). https://covidtracking.com/analysis-updates/covid-tracking-project-end-march-7. 
  12. ↑ "UCSF to House COVID Tracking Project, a National Database Donated by The Atlantic" (in en). July 29, 2021. https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2021/07/421151/ucsf-house-covid-tracking-project-national-database-donated-atlantic. 
  13. ↑ "Analysis & updates | Measuring Our Impact at The COVID Tracking Project" (in en). https://covidtracking.com/analysis-updates/measuring-our-impact. 
  14. ↑ ""COVID Tracking Project" - Google News Search". https://www.google.com/search?q=%22COVID+Tracking+Project%22&tbm=nws. 
  15. ↑ "COVID Tracking Project - Google Scholar". https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,33&q=%22covid+tracking+project%22&btnG=. 
  16. ↑ "COVID-19 Secondary data and statistics" (in en-us). 2020-09-02. https://www.cdc.gov/library/researchguides/2019novelcoronavirus/datastatistics.html. 
  17. ↑ "Wayback Machine - Opening Up America Again". 2020-05-10. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Testing-Overview.pdf. 
  18. ↑ "National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness". https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/National-Strategy-for-the-COVID-19-Response-and-Pandemic-Preparedness.pdf. 
  19. ↑ Stokes, Erin K. (2020). "Coronavirus Disease 2019 Case Surveillance — United States, January 22–May 30, 2020" (in en-us). MMWR. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 69 (24): 759–765. doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm6924e2. ISSN 0149-2195. PMID 32555134. PMC 7302472. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6924e2.htm. 
  20. ↑ "Evidence Table for COVID-19 Vaccines Allocation in Phase 1a of the Vaccination Program | CDC" (in en-us). 2021-01-20. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/acip-recs/vacc-specific/covid-19/evidence-table.html. 
  21. ↑ "Sigma Delta Chi Awards - Society of Professional Journalists". https://www.spj.org/sdxa20.asp. 
  22. ↑ "Sigma Award - Projects" (in en-US). https://sigmaawards.org/projects/. 
  23. ↑ "American Journalism Online Awards - 2021 Winners" (in en-US). https://journalism.nyu.edu/graduate/programs/american-journalism-online-masters/awards/2021-winners/. 

External links



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