• what is its purpose?

The purpose of the Cook County Public Health COVID-19 Surveillance Data and their respective visualizations is to keep people informed about the current situation in the cities of Cook county in regards to Covid-19 cases, deaths, and vaccinations through various lenses such as race, age, and location. It's important to mention that the data and their respective visualizations are being updated weekly every Wednesday for the previous Sunday through Saturday.

• what is the data?

The data includes all confirmed and probable cases under the jurisdiction of the Cook County Department of Public Health (excludes Chicago, Evanston, Oak Park, Skokie, and Stickney Township). All numbers are provisional and subject to change. Recent downward trends may be due to reporting delays rather than true decreases in case counts. In addition to confirmed case counts, health departments will often monitor disease trends using information collected before an official diagnosis is made - such as the symptoms a patient reports to their doctor. This is called syndromic surveillance. While it is not as precise as counting confirmed cases, syndromic surveillance can provide helpful information when case reporting might be delayed or incomplete.

• how was the data collected?

The data is collected from all acute care hospitals in Illinois since they are required to send syndromic surveillance data on emergency department and inpatient visits. These data are provisional and subject to change.

• who are the users that this visualization was made for?

The users that the visualizations found on the site are for everyone who is interested in learning about the current Covid-19 situation in Cook county. The users are not required to live in Cook county to learn about the Covid-19 surveillance data. However, this data might be more compelling or more useful for people who live in Cook county or who might have friends or family who live in Cook county.

• what questions do people want to ask?

People might want to learn about the current Covid-19 status of different areas/cities in Cook county. Additionally, people might be interested in how race, age, and district might have an impact on making people more vulnerable to getting inffected with Covid-19.

• how can they find the answers with this tool?

People can definitely use the different tabs found on top of the screen to look at data with a different filter such as age, race, and district.

• what works?

It is definitely favorable that the data is being updated on a weekly basis to ensure people are getting the most recent data so that they can make an informed decision on whether to go out and perform their activities or to plan ahead and not have as much contact with other people as possible.

• what needs improvement?

The visualizations definitely need to show data with different aspects simultaneously such as age, race, and district, etc to provide the user with a much more interactive and more comprehensive understanding of the data and make a more informed decision about their day-to-day life.