Last Updated on 12/20 at 9:45pm PT. If you have feedback or questions send it to: info@covidactnow.org

We have joined forces with Covid Act Now. You'll find key indicators at an even more local level, plus get alerts for your state and county.

Visit Covid Act Now

Official Data from the Federal Government - HHS, CDC, ASPR, USDS

On December 18, the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, and the U.S. Digital Service began sharing the internal documents used by their own response teams.

We started COVID Exit Strategy in April to try and fill in this gap. As a non-partisan project we've always believed that when government works well it is capable of great things. This data release and the civil servants from HHS, CDC, ASPR, and USDS exemplify what leadership during a pandemic looks like.

See the Community Profile Report

Tracking Our COVID-19 Response

Each state's progress towards a new normal
December 20 - Covid Act Now & Community Profile Report
Today is the last evening we are updating COVID Exit Strategy.

As a country, we are at peak cases, peak hospitalizations, and peak deaths. Our map continued to get darker and darker red. At this point, we'd have to add 2-3 more extreme shades to describe how significant the spread is in our communities.

To get through this crisis, the public needs an even more local view of how the virus is spreading to make informed decisions. The public also needs the federal government to take its place as the primary source for how this virus is affecting the country.

For local data and alerts about your community, use Covid Act Now. Our team is thrilled to be joining forces with them to continue to keep the public informed.

For data from the federal government, see the Community Profile Report produced by HHS, CDC, ASPR, and USDS. It was released two days ago and will be updated daily.
December 18 - Official federal report and dataset tracking COVID’s spread released today
Today HHS, CDC, and ASPR released their internal documents of how they are tracking the spread of COVID across the country. This is the most comprehensive national dataset on how this virus is affecting our communities.

Read HHS's Blogpost. & See the report and dataset.

This open data release exemplifies what our government is capable of doing when it is called on to respond to a pandemic. It is a travesty that the current administration has kept the career civil service from sharing this data with the public.
December 14 - Estimated Active Cases Added & Sunsetting on December 20
We added "Estimated Active Cases" to our main table. This data comes from covid19-projections.com, which is work by Youyang Gu to estimate the number of active COVID-19 cases from the new cases reported in a state.

"Our infections estimates include all infected individuals of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, not just those that took a COVID-19 test and tested positive. As of November, we estimate the true number of infected individuals in the US to be roughly 2-5x higher than the reported cases (20-50% detection rate)"

You can learn more about the method of calculating this metric by Youyang here.

And as a reminder, updates to COVID Exit Strategy will continue until December 20th. We've joined forces with COVID Act Now and will be making future updates there.
December 3 - Joining Forces With Covid Act Now and the Road Ahead
Since April, our small team has been focused on tracking how states are doing on critical public health measures like the spread of cases, hospital system readiness, and the robustness of testing.

We focused on aggregating and presenting data that was made publicly available by states and the federal government. The work that you see here would not be possible without the data collected and produced by The COVID Tracking Project, Covid Act Now, CMU's U.S. Symptom Survey, COVID-19 State Policy Team from UW, CDC, and HHS.

Our intention was to fill in a gap left by the federal government: to connect the data being reported about the virus with guidance and thresholds on the severity of the spread.

As it stands today, the official White House Coronavirus Task Force continues to keep its valuable weekly state-by-state report private. Because of that, we've used this platform to advocate for more COVID-related data to be made available by the federal government. A public crisis requires a unified public response. A unified public response requires public data.

Although HHS and CDC have begun sharing more and more datasets, the Administration continues to hesitate to share how the guidance CDC is issuing connects with the data being reported. This missing link has created an environment where COVID-19 is considered a hoax and the public is not taking the proper health precautions. It’s not too late for this Administration to begin sharing its reports. There are 48 days till the Inauguration and every day matters.
 
There's a hunger for this information. Over a million people have used our site’s dashboards with thousands coming back more than 200 times. The site has been a resource for federal agencies, state governments, journalists, businesses, and the public to guide reopening efforts and travel restrictions.

We’ve been cited by national media outlets such as The Economist, NPR, PBS, Fox News, New York Times, Washington Post, Politico, The Hill, Forbes, Bloomberg, Barron's, Wall Street Journal, Kaiser Family Foundation, AP, Newsweek, CNBC, Vox, and STAT.
 
The public demands and needs more real-time information about how this virus is spreading.

Road Ahead

As the crisis intensified in July our map went red. We added a new shade of darker red to capture the new highs of the second peak. Now as we are facing this third wave, our map is deep red and is not capturing the extremes being faced by a handful of states.

For an effective public health response, a thoroughly red national map is not as useful as what is happening in your local community. Over the past 3 months, we've been working with Covid Act Now on identifying new data sources and aligning on thresholds the key indicators. The road ahead is on their site and platform. Using Covid Act Now, you can zoom into the county you live in and get local alerts. It has been a joy working with them and their incredible team.

We'll continue to make updates to COVID Exit Strategy up to December 20th, 2020. If there's something on our site that you are not seeing at Covid Act Now, send us a note: info@covidactnow.org.
 
It has been a privilege playing a part in informing the public. This is a moment for us to say thank you to the volunteers that made this site possible. For a handful, it is an opportunity to transition. But for the others, we are thrilled to call Covid Act Now our new team and we look forward to keeping you informed.

- Ryan, Cyrus, and Marta
October 28 - PRESS CALL - THIRD WAVE CRASHING INTO STATES: HOSPITALIZATIONS & CASES RISING
Earlier today, CovidExitStrategy.org, United States of Care, Resolve to Save Lives, U.S. Digital Response, COVID Act Now, COVID State Policy dot org, and the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy held a press webinar outlining new data on COVID-19 hospitalizations, data challenges, and the current state of mask mandates.

You can view the video of the press conference here.
How Is My State Measured?
Using the gating criteria provided by the White House, we've tracked each state's progress towards its reduction in symptoms and cases, health system readiness,  and increased testing.
In interpreting the criteria, we infer that having a “robust testing program in place” means an ample amount of tests (> 500K tests per day) and a good test positivity rate (<5%). See our criteria.

According to the White House guidelines, a state must meet this criteria for 14-days to move into the "next phase". They've highlighted 3 phases and how restrictions can be relaxed as each are met.

Note: On 5/19, the CDC released its official guidance on its criteria. Our team will be reviewing and determining how to incorporate it.
How is My State Doing on Key Measures?
Using a simple red, yellow, green scale, you can see the progress towards the key measures.
How is the Disease Spreading?
What's critical is a downward trajectory of illness reported and documented cases.
Can Our Health System Handle the Spread?
Bed and ICU availability, case fatality rate, and cases per capita are a proxy for load on our hospitals. Not all data refreshes daily. Bed and ICU availability only refreshes Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday.
How Is My State Doing On Testing?
We track our country's daily progress towards two goals: reaching a baseline of 500K tests per day and an incident adjusted target per day. The targets for each state have been adjusted per capita.
What Data Are Missing?
Using sources like the COVID Tracking Project and the CDC we are able to start measure how a state is controlling the epidemic. Some sources are more "real-time" like case data, but others can lag a week like influenza-like illness (ILI) data. For the moment, this is the best representation of how a state is doing based on publicly available information.

Unfortunately, we cannot track how states are deploying contact tracing programs because that data is not reported yet. We also lack data sources for how states are implementing safe quarantine spaces. Once that data is available, we'll incorporate it.
Data & Sources
The data for this site comes from COVIDTracking.com (pulled on 12/20 at 9:45pm PT), COVID Act Now (pulled on 12/20 at 9:45pm PT), the CDC and HHS (ILI pulled at 12/20 at 9:45pm PT, ICU/bed occupancy pulled on 12/20 at 9:45pm PT), CMU US Symptom Survey (pulled on 12/20 at 9:45pm PT), covid19statepolicy.org (pulled at 12/20 at 9:45pm PT), covid19-projections.com (pulled at 12/20 at 9:45pm PT). The data powering the charts can be found in this Google Spreadsheet.
Contributors
We are a group of public health & crisis experts with experience working at the White House, Department of Health & Human Services, and on the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. Learn more.
About
We are a group of public health and crisis experts. With former experience working at the White House, Department of Health and Human Services, and on the Ebola epidemic in West Africa. We are a non-partisan group, having worked across multiple administrations. We built this site to track each state's progress towards stopping the spread of COVID-19.

Our focus is the data available on the ground and how we can surface it in meaningful ways for state and local leaders to act on.

This is a collaborative effort between individuals from a few organizations. We are always looking for feedback on how we can make this resource more useful. If you have suggestions, please send them our way.


Collaborators
Ryan Panchadsaram (@rypan)- U.S. Digital Response
Natalie Davis - United States of Care
Kristin Wikelius (@kwikelius)- United States of Care
Cyrus Shahpar, MD (@cyrusshahpar)- Resolve to Save Lives
Laura Cobb, DrPH - Resolve to Save Lives
Marta Wosińska, PhD - Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy
David Anderson - Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy
Lucas Merrill Brown, PhD - U.S. Digital Response
Devin Hunt - U.S. Digital Response
David Goligorsky - U.S. Digital Response
Patrick Sheehan - U.S. Digital Response
Sean MacPherson - U.S. Digital Response
Brice Wolfgang- U.S. Digital Response
Wesley Woo - U.S. Digital Response

Data Sources
Cases, Deaths, Tests - COVID Tracking Project
Rt - rt.live
ILI Activity Level - CDC
ICU & Hospital Utilization - CDC

Disclaimer

This is a volunteer effort and the data we use comes from publicly available sources. Our reports are only as good as the data that is being reported. If you are making critical decisions, we encourage you to visit the official federal, state, and local government websites.

Feedback
feedback@covidexitstrategy.org