After almost exactly three years of work we are closing down our online interactive COVID-19 data visualization and mapping tools that show the Shaman Lab’s weekly projections of COVID-19 case-loads for the coming six weeks. We are doing this, not because we think the pandemic is over, but because data that are required to make these projections are no longer being systematically collected. As such the Shaman Lab has halted its work creating COVID-19 case load projections and we are shutting down our visualization tools.  Now we will all need to make do with the CDC’s cumulative data on cases and deaths that are updated weekly, and daily data on hospitalizations.   

Back on March 16^th 2020 we began posting county-level maps of the U.S. depicting areas with large populations vulnerable to severe COVID-19 due to older age or having underlying health conditions.  On the 17^th, in partnership with PolicyMap, we set up our first online interactive mapping tool for COVID-19 vulnerability, and on March 24^th we used ESRI’s online mapping tool to launch our own online interactive mapping tool.  Our mapping portal initially depicted populations at high risk of severe COVID-19 due to older age or underlying health conditions, the availability of ICU beds, the ratios of high risk populations to ICU beds and the numbers of ICU beds that could be made available under various surge response scenarios (our paper on this work is here).  On April 13^th we released an online interactive mapping tool providing data on food insecurity and SNAP distribution schedules and policies (our paper on this work is here).

By April 2020, we had partnered with the Shaman lab to provide online data visualizations and interactive maps depicting the lab’s 6-week look forward projections of coming COVID-19 case loads, for every county in the U.S. Since then we have refreshed our data visualizations and map data every Monday with the latest COVID-19 projections from the Shaman lab.  These tools and the underlying data were used by local, state and federal government, Congress, the military, corporations and individual users to understand the likely coming course of the pandemic in their area.  We also provided customized data analytics, data visualization and interactive mapping tools to City of Stamford CT to support their COVID-19 response efforts (our paper on these efforts is here).