Nigel Parry/Lowertown.info—Last week, Ramsey County launched a COVID-19 tracking dashboard, and the Minnesota Department of Health relaunched its positive cases tracker with a major change to how the date of cases is reported.

Ramsey County launches “COVID-19 Situation Update” dashboard

Last week, Ramsey County launched a new “COVID-19 Situation Update” dashboard (Saint Paul is located in Ramsey County).

May 15th totals from Ramsey County.

Ramsey County’s new dashboard follows the style of similar models used by Johns Hopkins University and other global Coronavirus online tracking services, and breaks down COVID-19 Cases by Day & Cumulative, Cases by Race, Ethnicity, Sex, Age, and Type of Residence, COVID-19 Cases by City, and Deaths by Sex, Residence Type, Hospitalization Status and Age—all sourced from Minnesota Department of Health data. Raw data files are available for download.

Ramsey County COVID-19 case demographics as of May 14th.

Minnesota Department of Health changes method of counting positive cases

The Minnesota Department of Health first began posting its COVID-19 data online in its dedicated Situation Update for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) section, around the time of Minnesota’s first positive case was reported on March 6th. On May 13th, the agency changed the way it counts positive cases. Previously, it logged “new cases” on the date that the positive case was first reported.

The new text on their website says: “As of 5/13/2020, total case data is represented by specimen collection date. Cases over time were previously based on report date.” Read more about the impact of the change below: 

Related Links

• Ramsey County’s “COVID-19 Situation Update” dashboard
• Minnesota Department of Health’s Situation Update for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) section
• Lowertown.info’s Minnesota COVID-19 Statistics & Charts page