City of Austin retiring COVID-19 dashboard after four years: APH
AUSTIN, Texas - Austin Public Health's COVID-19 Dashboard is retiring after four years of presenting data on the pandemic's status in the city.
The dashboard, which gathered millions of views during its operation, according to the city, displayed the city's COVID-19 statistics and informed both individual behavior and emergency operational decisions since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020.
The city says that, at the height of Austin-Travis County's emergency response in 2022, more than 22,000 cases of the virus were reported in just one week.
Providers are no longer required to report individual cases of COVID-19 to public health officials, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. This follows the CDC's new respiratory virus guidance protocols.
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Providers are still advised to notify Austin Public Health if an outbreak of COVID-19 occurs.
"This is the end of an era for Austin Public Health and the community we serve. We launched the dashboard at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it has been invaluable to our work for the last four years," said Austin–Travis County Health Authority Dr. Desmar Walkes. "The dashboard highlighted zip codes and populations that called for additional outreach, it showed us the effectiveness of our immunization and prevention campaigns and it served as a stark reminder of those who were lost and the importance of our continued efforts to fight this virus."
The city is working to archive the data from the dashboard.