T-Squared: We’re sunsetting our COVID-19 data tracker

A lot has changed since the COVID-19 tracker was first launched in April 2020, and tracking the virus in the same way doesn’t make as much sense now. For instance:

• Case numbers are incomplete because many people are using home tests instead of testing at a clinic or doctor’s office. This makes it hard to compare past surges with what we’re seeing now.

• The milder omicron variants — along with increases in the number of people who have been vaccinated and the amount who have been previously infected — mean cases no longer lead to high hospitalization levels and an overburdened health care system.

• Vaccination rates in Texas have been mostly stagnant this year, with the rate of immunized people increasing by only 1.4 percentage points to 61.6% in the last four months.

In addition, our data source, the Texas Department of State Health Services, has stopped updating its data on the weekends.

We are not stopping the tracker updates because we think the pandemic is over. We know COVID-19 is still spreading in Texas, and health reporter Karen Brooks Harper will continue to keep a close eye on the trends with help from our data reporters.

Her regular coverage, as well as other reporters’ work, is available on our coronavirus series page. This will continue to be updated with the latest pandemic-related stories from our staff.

Readers still have several resources available to track COVID-19 in their communities and statewide. A few examples:

• DSHS updates its case, hospitalization, test and vaccine dashboards every weekday.

• Many cities, towns and counties in Texas still have COVID-19 dashboards they update regularly, including Harris County, Dallas County, San Antonio, Austin and El Paso. The Houston Health Department has a wastewater monitoring dashboard, which detects the prevalence of the virus in the city’s wastewater and is a good early indicator of whether it’s spreading in the community.

• Some news outlets, like The New York Times, track numbers in Texas daily.

• Johns Hopkins University & Medicine has its own dashboard.

If you don’t see your community represented in this list, check local government websites because they might have their own COVID-19 data that they update regularly as well.

No, this was solely a decision made by our editors.

The Tribune’s coronavirus tracker had a major impact internally and externally. In all, the page received 4.3 million pageviews since it launched in April 2020 and was the most popular article on the Tribune’s site during the first year of the pandemic. We noticed traffic to the page was at its highest when the spread of the virus was at its worst.

It also helped direct our news coverage throughout the pandemic. Our data visuals team closely tracked the numbers every day, leading to countless collaborations with health reporters who were reporting on the impacts of the virus. This included somber stories on the people who died and, more recently, investigations into disparities in vaccine rates across the state.