PHIGHT COVID
(Public Health Interventions aGainst Human Transmission of Covid 19)
Background
In 2020, the world faced an unprecedented pandemic from SARS-CoV-2 (the causative agent of COVID-19) with no licensed vaccines or antivirals at hand. While public health interventions like mask orders, large gathering bans, and business closures can impact the spread of emerging respiratory viruses like SARS-CoV-2, in the United States, no federal policies were introduced to manage or reduce the spread of COVID-19. Instead, each state was left to devise their own policies to protect their residents. The PHIGHT COVID interactive dashboard was created in order to track intervention strategies and COVID-19 cases across the US over time in order to help evaluate effective means of mitigating virus spread.
In the map above, each state was given a score based on the strength and number of public health interventions. The higher the score, the darker the color of the state. The green circles represent the number of new daily COVID-19 cases per 500,000 people in each state. The map plays through time from March 2020 to March 2021.
The graph above shows an example of statewide data on how the number of daily COVID-19 cases (black dots, normalized to 500,000 people) changes over time relative to when restrictions were put in place (magenta) or eased (green), and vaccines available (Pfizer, Moderna).
Objectives
- To evaluate the effectiveness of interventions put forth by cities, counties, states, and regions across the US in limiting virus spread.
- To track lag times between implementation of interventions and sustained decreases in COVID-19 cases to help determine when and how long restrictions should be used.