An interdisciplinary team led by PolicyLab Director David Rubin, MD, MSCE, and PolicyLab researchers Gregory Tasian, MD, MSc, MSCE, and Jing Huang, PhD, alongside global experts, launched a data visualization of their new model today that tracks and projects the spread of COVID-19 in 260 counties (211 with active outbreaks). This model, known as COVID-Lab: Mapping COVID-19 in Your Community, represents more than 50% of the U.S. population and every state. Using data from a variety of publicly available sources, the researchers built COVID-Lab to observe how population factors (e.g. age) and city characteristics (e.g. density) affect the spread of COVID-19 over time across a county. Their initial findings suggest social distancing and population density, and to a lesser extent temperature, have the most significant impact on virus transmission. You can view the interactive maps of their model here.

Read more about this project, and be sure to check out PolicyLab’s COVID-19 resource center for more about our response to this crisis.