Covid-19 Community Spread By Midwest Counties

Like many network-based things, we believe that coronavirus should be measured in smaller groupings than states.  For our work, we almost always try to measure information that is presented in county, city, or MSA definitions.  And like, many of our other measurements, it is difficult to find data that is useful to understand local numbers.

So, to that end, we have combed through data to build some simple maps to identify where coronavirus is, and where there is community spread.  We believe that these tools are probably the best way for you to get real information about what is happening in your little piece of the Midwest.  These are dependent on a number of public health data sites and news conferences – so they may be slow to update.  But, my expectation is that we will try to keep them updated as we see the pandemic spread

This first picture is a map of all of the counties in the eight-state region that reported corona-virus as of noon on March 16.  These counties are shaded by the number of cases reported.  Cook County (Chicago) has the most – at over 70 while most of the counties have only 1.

This next one was a little more difficult to find.  Many states are not doing an excellent job of acknowledging which cases appear to be community spread versus travel-related.  For example, it appears likely that the Knox County case in Nebraska and some of the cases in Illinois are community spread.  Much of this is difficult to pin down simply because of the reporting of the cases occurring in many communities.

For example, the data in Illinois (which has been pretty good) illustrates that multiple county and state officials are now getting involved in reporting.  Every website and data source is different.  Thus, the collection of data is a pain – but possible.  Looking back a week or so, you can see that there were no cases in Illinois outside of Cook County – and now there are tens of cases.  This is suggestive of community spread, but the health departments were not able to ascertain in every case the origin of the disease.  This means that my community spread map is likely to add numerous counties in the coming weeks, but as of right now we only have a small number of counties reporting.

Regardless of your interest in this data, I think it is incumbent on all of us to “flatten the curve”.  Please be safe and healthy.