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State COVID dashboard updated to add new info

Posted at 7:21 PM, Jul 08, 2020
and last updated 2020-07-08 20:21:24-04

The State's COVID dashboard has been updated recently to offer new information.

The dashboard, which you can find here, already has detailed information - even down to census tracts - about positive cases. You also can find out many tests have been taken by residents of each parish, as well as hospitalizations and available beds, and numbers about people on venitlators, and ventilator availability.

This week and last, several new data sets were added. You can now see hospitalizations and ventilator use by region, and hospital bed and ventilator availability by region. You can see the gender and race breakdown of cases and deaths by parish, and hospitalizations broken down by the hour for each day.

You also can see testing by region, as well as positive percentage by region.

The state also is going to provide weekly data updates on cases by race. The data on deaths by race has been available for some time, but now the cases by race has been added.

"We've tried to put more and more data out for the public to be able to consume," said Dr. Alex Billioux, Assistant Secretary of Health for the. Louisiana Department of Health's Office of Public Health. "We have a lot more data, and we have a lot more infrastructure to give us information, so we can see a lot more early warning signs."

This week, 41 percent of the cases are African Americans, 29 percent are white, 11 percent is other, and 19 percent are unknown. Billioux said that last figure is an issue, but test data doesn't always include race.

The data is updated daily at noon, and can be downloaded.

And, the state is providing information about "outbreaks" and cases. That information will be updated weekly, like the death data and the "presumed recovered" numbers. You can find it here.

So far, the highest number of outbreaks, 36, was in bars. There were 398 cases linked to bar outbreaks, the data states.

Industrial settings and restaurants were tied with 16, with 117 and 68 cases respectively. Food processing plants had 11 outbreaks, with 423 cases. Last in the top five was colleges or universities, with three outbreaks and 84 cases.

Here are some interesting data points: One public social event resulted in 24 cases. Three private social events resulted in 38 cases, and seven weddings resulted in 31 cases of COVID.