Live Tracker From Harvard and Microsoft Notes COVID Cases, Deaths by Congressional Districts

From the Harvard Gazette:

Researchers at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and Microsoft AI for Health have created a COVID-19 live tracker that monitors the current status of virus cases and deaths, as well as the reduction of new cases, in U.S. congressional districts.

It is the first compilation of this data, which could be key for elected officials and their constituents to monitor and develop testing strategies, vaccine deployment strategies, and other measures to enable their districts to open safely.

“By connecting previously separate reporting geographies for public health and electoral data, this data set represents an important effort,” said Gary King, director of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and Weatherhead University Professor at Harvard.

[Clip]

Nearly a year into the global pandemic, data breakdown by U.S. congressional districts has not been readily available. S.V. Subramanian and researchers in the Geographic Insights Lab, who had previously applied a geographical method to convert county-level opioid prescriptions data to the congressional district level, noticed that similar data was lacking for the pandemic. The team developed COVID-19 metrics for congressional districts and, working with Geographics Analysis center member Wendy Guan, developed a dashboard to share the data. John Kahan, vice president and chief data analytics officer at Microsoft, noted that the team’s work was similar to a project underway at Microsoft, and the groups joined forces to provide mutual scientific support, such as methodologies and data verification.

The live tracker contains COVID-19 metrics for each congressional district, such as confirmed cases and deaths per 100K/1M people, cumulative cases and deaths, and new cases and deaths. It also provides the progress-to-zero metric to monitor progress on addressing the pandemic.

Learn More, Read the Complete Article

Direct to Online Tracking Tools (via Microsoft AI)

Filed under: Dashboards, Data Files, News