COVID-19 data tool available through Essentia Health

In response to the recent surge of COVID-19 across the region —and the frequent fluctuations in case rates— Essentia Health has launched a COVID-19 Regional Projections Dashboard .

This dashboard aggregates publicly available data and features an interactive map of Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin. Users can compare case numbers and projections by state and drill down further by county, according to an Essentia Health news release.

Available metrics include cases per 10,000 people, daily new cases, seven-day positivity rates, seven-day average doubling rates, etc. to inform local communities by presenting data in a highly visual way.

“We hope that community members use this dashboard to better understand the impact of COVID in our region, and how behaviors like physical distancing and masking affect the spread of this disease,” chief medical information officer Dr. Sarah Manney said in the release. “As a community we can use this dashboard to observe the changes over time and celebrate as we slow the spread of COVID.”

For example, you can look at case rates following a mask mandate or a holiday to understand the resulting impact. The trendlines tell a story of where we’ve been throughout this pandemic, highlighting the severity of the current situation and forecasting possible scenarios, as the release stated.

“We as a team of scientists have been watching this every day since March, and we can absolutely tell when the data changes because of the behavior of the community,” Manney said in the release.

To Manney, the dashboard is a visualization tool that provides a daily snapshot of the state of COVID-19 across our region.

The dashboard was developed by Essentia’s analytics department and the Essentia Institute of Rural Health. The dashboard is updated daily, Monday through Friday. Users are encouraged to first view the three-minute video tutorial, which provides additional context and explains how best to navigate the dashboard.

The dashboard can be accessed at www.essentiahealth.org/covid-19/covid-19-regional-case-projections/ . If you are having issues with the data displaying correctly, scroll down to almost the bottom of the page and look for a laptop screen picture to switch to the desktop version.

The data used is from the Minnesota Department of Health, North Dakota Department of Health, Wisconsin Department of Health and the New York Times.