ITHACA, N.Y. (WHCU) – The Tompkins County Health Department unveiling a new COVID-19 dashboard.
The new weekly reporting system will include data on active hospitalizations, new hospital admissions, total resident deaths, weekly case rates per 100K, positive cases over the last 7 days, percent positive over the last 7 days, vaccination rates and the CDC community level. Tompkins County Health Department data will come directly from datasets maintained by the New York State Department of Health and CDC. The dashboard will update automatically as it becomes available.
The dashboard will no longer be displayed on the homepage, and health officials with TCHD will provide weekly updates on the data on Fridays via social media. With reported daily case numbers changing to case rate, the previously used online database called CommCare will no longer be utilized. Residents should be aware that with the closing of CommCare, you will no longer receive news of a positive test result from the Health Department. You will receive your result directly from wherever you were tested.
TCHD will no longer report the number of tests conducted and will be discontinuing the self-reporting online system.
Hospitalization rates remain the primary indicator of the impact of COVID-19. Cayuga Health reports their bed capacity and COVID-19 patients directly to NYS, and the TCHD dashboard will include those numbers.
Death data will come from the Department of Health and will now include COVID-19 deaths of county residents who passed away outside of Tompkins County, bringing the death total from 73 to 98.
Vaccination data will come directly from the CDC.
“We recognize the value of data in keeping the community informed of their personal risk from COVID-19 and have taken great pride in providing accurate, reliable, and consistent data to our residents throughout the pandemic,” said Public Health Director Frank Kruppa. “With these values in mind, we believe the shift in our data reporting will strengthen the accuracy, reliability and consistency, as we work to continue providing our community with the information regarding local disease prevalence and severity.”
