CHCC redraws COVID-19 dashboard

In what is being plugged as a means to be more transparent to the public, the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. has amended its COVID-19 dashboard on its website to make the data more widely accessible to the public now.

From just providing a tally of how many COVID-19 cases are there so far, the number of “recovered” cases, how many people have gotten tested for COVID-19, etc., it now also incorporated geographic data that, according to the CHCC geographic information system analyst Victoria Shirriff, shows where an infected person was staying within the last 14 days when they were diagnosed. She said the community can see all the information in one sitting, rather than searching for “fragmented pieces.”

“They’re not really clusters, but they are where that person was staying within the past 14 days when they were diagnosed and this kind of helps community members gauge their risk because this is where that individual might have been going out more into that part of the community,” said Shirriff.

One important thing to keep in mind, Shirriff said, is that the mapping doesn’t give anyone a “free pass” if their precinct has had no COVID-19 cases. Because Saipan is a small island, the virus doesn’t discriminate and can infect people not just based on where someone lives, she added.

CHCC chief operations officer Subroto Banerji clarified, though that every individual’s privacy is crucial, so the mapping is just the “beginning tip of the spear” on opportunities for CHCC to give people who will benefit the most from the information.

“The denominator allows for much better visualization of those data. So it’s sort of a double-edged sword. We wish we didn’t have that many cases, but now that we do, we are able to use these tools much more effectively,” said Banerji.

According to their data, of the 36 of the CNMI’s confirmed cases, 21 are male and 15 are female and over 10,697 residents (or 21% of the population) have already been tested for COVID-19.

The CNMI now has a total of 36 confirmed cases, with two deaths and six active cases.

The dashboard is available on CHCC’s website at https://chcc.gov.mp/#gsc.tab=0.

COVID-19 on Guam

According to the Joint Information Center in Guam, one case tested positive at the Guam Memorial Hospital Authority and did not report recent travel or contact to a confirmed case.

To date, Guam has had a total of 314 cases, with five deaths, 214 released from isolation, and 95 active cases. Of those cases, 267 are classified as civilians and 47 are military service members.

COVID-19 test results are reported from multiple labs at varying times of the day. JIC will report cumulative COVID-19 test results once a day, unless unavailable.