Massachusetts unveiled its highly anticipated interactive, searchable coronavirus dashboard on Monday, making some of the state’s in-depth data on the pandemic more accessible to the public.
View the dashboard here.
Monday’s data showed that the state confirmed more than 375,000 COVID-19 cases during the pandemic. The Massachusetts Department of Public Health confirmed 4,358 new cases of the virus, bringing the total to 375,455, and a further 60 deaths brought the death toll to 12,401.
Another probable death was also reported, meaning 270 deaths are now considered likely related to COVID-19 in the state.
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The percentage of coronavirus tests that return positive on average has risen to 8.5%, the department said.
The number of patients admitted to hospital for COVID-19 has risen again to 2,339. Of those hospitalized, 423 were listed as being in intensive care units and 258 intubated, according to the DPH.
Gov. Charlie Baker provides details on vaccine distribution for emergency responders in Mass.
The state is now in the midst of an increase in post-holiday coronavirus cases, one that isn’t necessarily fully reflected in the data, Baker said Monday.
“It is clear that due to the holiday there are a few delays in reporting and fewer people are being tested. We expect this to catch up soon and give us a better idea of where our current trends are in the coming days,” said he. .
The new dashboard was loading when it debuted just before 5pm, but appeared to be having issues with the server shortly after. A comment later added to the page read: “Due to the large amounts of web traffic, some users have had problems accessing the current COVID-19 dashboard. We are working on a solution to this issue soon and expect the dashboard to be released soon. post again. ”
The dashboard contains both text and graphical overviews of various coronavirus statistics, including cases, deaths, tests and hospitalizations, as well as various breakouts that provide more detail on statistics.
Massachusetts Department of Health The Trends tab of the Massachusetts coronavirus dashboard as it appeared on its debut on Monday, January 4, 2020.
The Department of Health is taking its “data to a new level by building an interactive and more user-friendly dashboard to review it,” Gov. Charlie Baker said in a newsletter earlier Monday.
The dashboard will be expanded in the future, Baker added.
The state’s coronavirus data has so far been available in a long PDF document available for download every day around 5:00 PM. More data, such as the risk of coronavirus transmission by city and how many vaccines have been administered in the state, is available in weekly reports.
Other states have had digital dashboards for months and the Massachusetts version has been weeks in the making.
Doctors worry that the increased volume they are already seeing will only get worse as the peak starts to rise after Christmas.
This fall, several public health experts told NBC10 Boston that the state’s coronavirus data has been presented particularly thoroughly. Dr. Thomas Tsai, a professor at Harvard Medical School and Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health who studies public health, policy and data science, said this is more important than presenting the data in an accessible and interactive way.
He noted that the state of Georgia outsourced its dashboard, which looked nice but showed questionable data – Atlanta Magazine called it a disaster that tarnished the Georgia Department of Public Health’s reputation – and was a much worse alternative than what Massachusetts has provided.
“I actually think the Massachusetts dashboard has a really great wealth of data that many other states don’t,” he said, calling the state’s previous dashboard the equivalent of a Powerpoint presentation that “is very helpful to public health researchers. and for public health response. “