Updated COVID-19 risk assessment dashboard provides deeper insight into regional and county trends

— from Emergency Operations Center, Camp Murray —

Camp Murray, WA — Gov. Jay Inslee and the state’s Joint Information Center have launched an updated version of the state’s COVID-19 risk assessment dashboard. The updated dashboard provides researchers and the public a better ability to see what’s happening at the regional and county level when it comes to COVID-19 activity, testing, and healthcare system readiness.

“As we begin to gradually reopen and shift to a county-based plan, it’s crucial we keep a close eye on if, where and how COVID-19 is spreading,” said Inslee. “Washingtonians have been doing their part to keep each other healthy and safe, and we want to keep up that good work. We hope the data provided in this dashboard helps us all make well-reasoned decisions about how we can reopen safely.”

Inslee announced his updated county-based Safe Start reopening plan on May 29. With this new approach, counties will have more flexibility to demonstrate they can safely allow additional economic activity based on targeted metrics. Many of those metrics have been incorporated into the dashboard so it’s easier to see how well a county is meeting key targets. The metric goals are intended to be applied as targets, not hardline measures, and reflect recommendations from the Washington State Department of Health. The targets each contribute to reducing risk of disease transmission, and are to be considered in whole. Where one target is not fully achieved, actions taken with a different target may offset the overall risk.

“This data, combined with the additional information provided by counties when they apply for approval to move to a new phase, will help us work together to determine when it’s safe for a community to move forward,” said John Wiesman, Secretary of the Washington State Department of Health.

The new Power BI dashboard, built through a partnership with Microsoft, provides a dynamic new way of displaying what had previously been static snapshots of manually-compiled data. In the weeks to come, the new dashboard will also incorporate data related to case investigations and contact tracing and high risk populations.

The dashboard is fed with data from multiple sources including the Washington State Department of Health, the state’s new WA HEALTH hospital reporting system, the state Department of Social and Health Services, and more.

“We are proud to partner with Washington state’s COVID-19 incident response team, by providing the technology and data analytics to have better visibility into the regional and county level development of COVID-19,” said John Kahan, Chief Data Analytics Officer and global lead for the AI for Health program. “This will inform our local governments with key metrics to determine the next steps in the phased Start Safe approach.”