Question: I feel like I don’t actually know how DC is doing at this time. Like I saw a map floating around Twitter that we are trending badly, but I don’t honestly know at this point how to substantiate things. Help!

Answer: The internets are so full of it — the good, the bad, the ugly. Here are a few websites that I recommend for following the data: 1) CovidTracking.com keeps updated state-by-state data on COVID testing, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths; 2) DC’s Coronavirus Webpage provides key DC data updated daily; 3) NY Times Coronavirus Tracker provides great visualizations, including interactive state-by-state maps; 4) Johns Hopkins COVID Tracker provides county-level case data and much more; and 5) Our World in Data provides lots of COVID data and visualizations for the US and other countries.

Turning to DC’s current trajectory, see Figure 1. As I see it, DC is still looking pretty good.

• Tests are increasing (green bars), and test positivity rate remains low (line chart).
• Cases are beginning to rise (yellow bars). In the context of increasing tests and reopening, we’d expect to see increases in cases. So far, the increase is manageable (in my opinion), especially since the test positivity rate is still so low and hospitalizations are also low.
• Currently hospitalized patients have plateaued around 90 for the last several days (orange bars; note: DC did not report hospitalizations earlier in the pandemic).
• DC has not witnessed any deaths for the last 4 days (red bars).

Figure 1. COVID in Washington, DC (data from covidtracking.com)