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COVID-19 Incidence Rate

The incidence rate is a measure of the frequency with which the event, in this case COVID-19, occurs over a specific period. Numerically, it is defined it as the number of new cases for the disease within a time frame, as a proportion of the number of people at risk for the disease. Researchers tracked the incidence rates for 20 MSAs, including the Tampa Bay MSA. They chose the incidence rate as metric because it allows for easy comparison of the cases across geographies with different populations – specifically as total COVID-19 cases for every 100,000 people. Incidence rate is important because it provides a complete picture of the state of the pandemic in a community.

Data was provided by the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, which has tracked the virus since January. It is the most comprehensive publicly available dataset andserves as a vital resource for millions of users to follow the novel coronavirus outbreak as it unfolded around the country.

Researchers began by gathering county-level data daily from the John Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. They first filtered the data to get only the 177 counties which belong to the 20 comparison MSAs. They then pulled county populations from the U.S. Census Bureau website and added the population, confirmed cases, deaths, recovered and active cases by daily of counties belonging to one MSA to get the total values for that MSA. Researchers did this for all 20 MSAs. The Incidence rate was calculated the incidence rate with the formula of (confirmed cases/ population)*1000000.

The COVID-19 incidence rate measures the daily total number of COVID-19 cases reported per 100,000 people. Tracking incidence over time in the graph illustrates the speed of which the virus spread through the community.

Insights

• Miami saw the highest daily COVID-19 incidence rates since the end of June, followed by Nashville.
• The Tampa Bay region began experiencing a steep increase in the daily COVID-19 incidence rates starting in July.
• The Tampa Bay region has the least incidence rates among the Florida MSAs.
• Portland saw the least incidence rates relatively.
• Most MSAs saw a steep rise in incidence rates in the month of November.

COVID-19 Incidence Rate

COVID-19 Incidence Rate - Florida