https://news.uchicago.edu/story/state-level-data-misses-growing-coronavirus-hot-spots-us-including-south
UChicago researchers find clusters in Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi
Though urban areas like New York City are getting the lion’s share of media attention for their coronavirus outbreaks, there are rapidly forming hot spots across the United States, including in southern states such as Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi, according to a group of data scientists at the University of Chicago.
By looking at data at the county level rather than state level, they were able to find trends that were “hidden” in the larger view, they said. The results, compiled in an interactive visualization, are a way to more efficiently track coronavirus clusters and direct urgently needed resources.
“County-level visualizations show a dramatically more detailed pandemic landscape, where aggregate data alone can miss local hot spots of surging COVID cases,” said Marynia Kolak, assistant director of health informatics at the Center for Spatial Data Science at the University of Chicago. “If you only look at state-level data, a county cluster would have to be extreme to show up, and by then you’re already too late for many of these prevention measures.”
As of March 23, they found significant clusters in Detroit and New Orleans, as well as in Little Rock and Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Greenville, Mississippi; Nashville, Tennessee; Atlanta and Albany, Georgia; and Columbia, South Carolina. The Chicagoland area is in the top five of nationwide coronavirus clusters when considering total confirmed cases alone.
One number they pay attention to is the number of confirmed cases per million people in the area. While New York and New Jersey were still the highest at 1,444 cases per million people, Albany and New Orleans were not far behind at 527 and 508, respectively.
“While high case numbers in population-dense, high-travel areas like New York City, New Jersey and Seattle are of course a focus of concern, local hot spots in areas with limited hospital infrastructure can be easily overlooked," said Xun Li, the assistant director of data science at the CSDS. “Even in the past few days we watched clusters emerge in areas like Albany, Georgia and spin up very rapidly. Now we’re getting reports that ICUs are at or over capacity there.”
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