CONTACT
Leah Bucco-White, Communications, (402) 309-4157,
leah.bucco-white@nebraska.gov
Khalilah LeGrand, Communications, (402) 853-1320,
khalilah.legrand@nebraska.gov
Agency on Track to Add Detailed Race and Ethnicity Data at June's End
LINCOLN – The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) COVID-19 data dashboard has undergone several enhancements since appearing on the DHHS public website on March 27. And that work is continuing.
Recently, four additional tabs were added to the dashboard. The tabs include information on the number of recoveries and active hospitalizations as well as age group and gender breakouts for positive cases, recoveries, hospitalizations and deaths.
The improvement joins past additions to the data dashboard that describe hospital capacity and other improvements.
Further expansions are coming.
At Governor Pete Ricketts' daily coronavirus briefing May 29, Gov. Ricketts was joined by DHHS CEO Dannette R. Smith, who said DHHS is working to compile data from four sources that would track race and ethnicity as they relate to COVID-19. The four data sources are laboratory reports; the contact tracing data system, which gathers where an infected person has been and with whom they may have been in contact; the Nebraska Health Information Initiative, and vital records.
These data breakdowns are expected on the DHHS COVID-19 dashboard at the end of June. A snapshot of the distribution of COVID-19 among different races and ethnicities in Nebraska is currently available on the DHHS coronavirus website - http://dhhs.ne.gov/Documents/COVID-19-Summary-of-Race-and-Ethnicity-Categories.pdf.
Since its inception in March, the heart of the data dashboard has been a zoomable Nebraska map with COVID-19 data broken out by county. Clicking each county brings up the number of tests performed there, the positives and negatives that resulted from the tests and the number of COVID-19 related deaths.
Surrounding the map are large infographic-style, statistics for total statewide tests, total positives, total negatives, Nebraska deaths related to COVID-19, a written chart of cases in each county, and, finally, a bar graph that shows the number of statewide cases over time.
View the DHHS COVID-19 data dashboard at http://dhhs.ne.gov/coronavirus.