Coronavirus COVID-19 Maps - A Different View

On March 3rd, I posted a blog entry linking the Interactive Coronavirus COVID-19 Dashboard and Map hosted by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. This dashboard and map is now an indispensable tool for government officials, health care professionals, and the public in monitoring the spread of COVID-19.

GIS is also being used to analyze the pandemic. ACC GIS Alum and GIS Analyst at BIO-WEST, Inc. Cara Wade forwarded me this Redit feed by https://www.reddit.com/user/DrHoatzin/ analyzing the impact of COVID-19 on Texas. Rather than mapping the total number of cases by location (not much different than making a population map), they are mapping the number of cases and hospital beds normalized per county population (Figure 1). This provides a much different view of COVID-19 and how it might impact our health system.

Figure 1

In another example of how spatial analysis is being used in response to this pandemic, mobile location data provider Unacast is publishing a Social Distancing Scoreboard (Figure 2). The dashboard allows you to see how states and individual counties are practicing social distancing.

Figure 2

In my final example, you can see the affect of social distancing on clusters of fever. Public health tech firm Kinsa publishes an interactive map that visualizes seasonal illness linked to fever. The company uploads fever readings from more than 1 million digital thermometers in use around the U.S.  Their US Health Weather Map monitors the temperature of the US by county (Figure 3). I have a hunch this data is a little biased right now as healthy people take their temperatures more frequently than they would in a normal flu season. Still - it's interesting to see a different take on the COVID-19 pandemic.

Figure 3