Baltimore City Health Department Releases Updated Coronavirus Metrics Dashboard 

Data available includes changes regarding CDC COVID community level indicators and updates to cases and testing

Media Contact: Greg Padgett, Greg.Padgett@baltimorecity.gov 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BALTIMORE, MD. (March 24, 2022) – The Baltimore City Health Department (BCHD) has taken feedback from residents and, in consultation with our epidemiologists, has released an updated Coronavirus dashboard, available at coronavirus.baltimorecity.gov. The updated dashboard uses new data sources to display the number of new Coronavirus (COVID) cases, deaths, test volume, and percent positivity within Baltimore City based on a 7-day average. The dashboard provides the percent of eligible residents ages 12 and over who have received their first or single dose of vaccine. It also incorporates the recently released CDC COVID community level via the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

“The information in the Key Metrics portion of the dashboard provides Baltimore City residents with the data points that help the health department determine when it is appropriate or necessary to reintroduce any restrictions to limit the spread of disease including indoor mask mandates," said Baltimore City Health Commissioner Dr. Letitia Dzirasa. “Although we continue to see daily cases and hospitalizations drop, the dashboard will aid the public and our staff to monitor the data for indicators of surges due to new variants or subvariants of Coronavirus,” she said.

In December, a network security incident involving the Maryland Department of Health (MDH) prevented BCHD from receiving COVID case, death, testing, and vaccination data from MDH. This incident prevented BCHD from updating Baltimore City’s Coronavirus dashboard. Given that MDH has not yet restarted these datastreams, BCHD changed data sources so that cases, deaths, testing, and vaccination information on the dashboard can now be updated daily Monday through Friday.

“We are pleased to return to daily updates of the Coronavirus dashboard for COVID cases, deaths, testing, and vaccinations,” said BCHD Chief Epidemiologist Dr. Darcy Phelan-Emrick. “Based on feedback from residents, we are also now displaying the city’s current COVID community level as recently released by the CDC,” said Phelan-Emrick. The dashboard now imports the three metrics calculated and used by the CDC to determine the COVID community level: new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population in the past seven days, percent of staffed hospital inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients, and new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 population in the past seven days.

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