From the earliest days of the pandemic, demand for greater transparency into COVID-19 data was high while the fluid nature of public health reporting impacted the ability to make well-informed decisions. As a result, local public health and healthcare officials were simultaneously overwhelmed with data and underwhelmed with the timely information and critical insights to help ensure optimal decisions around mitigation strategies.
The reality is that the state and national data relied upon by many public health officials offers limited proactive insight into the ebb and flow of the virus at the state and local levels. This remains as true today as it was in the earliest stages of the pandemic.