A Major COVID-19 Tracking Database Called The COVID Tracking Project is Ending
For the last year, Americans have been inundated with numbers: daily case counts, both new cases and total cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. These numbers indicated whether it was safe to go out to eat or even to the grocery store and had the potential to inform public health measures — but there was controversy as well.
At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, data was fragmented across the United States, with different states and even different localities releasing varying — and often irregular — levels of information at different times and in different ways.
In response, two journalists with The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer and Alexis Madrigal, and an independent data scientist, Jeff Hammerbacher, launched the COVID Tracking Project on March 7, 2020. The Atlantic’s managing editor Erin Kissane also joined and the team then invited the public to contribute. The project has since been run by volunteers, filling in data gaps that the leaders say should’ve been the federal government’s role all along.
