Johns Hopkins University & Medicine plans to cease the Coronavirus Resource Center's ongoing collection and reporting of COVID-19 data on March 10—three years after the institution embarked on the unprecedented effort of tracking an unfolding pandemic in near real time.
The pioneering public service has operated since the novel coronavirus first began spreading globally in January 2020 to provide the public, journalists, and policymakers across the United States and around the world with visualizations of cases and deaths as they were being reported.
Johns Hopkins' comprehensive pandemic data will remain free and accessible to researchers, journalists, and the public for all data reported between Jan. 22, 2020, and March 10, 2023. In addition, the interdisciplinary group of faculty and experts in data science, epidemiology, medicine, public health policy, and vaccinology that advised and led the Coronavirus Resource Center (CRC) will continue to provide analysis and guidance regarding the ongoing pandemic.
Influential COVID tracker shuts down
On Feb. 10, NPR's 'Morning Edition' broke the news that the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center plans to cease operations on March 10
The CRC initiative drew on the expertise and collaboration of researchers and faculty from across Johns Hopkins, including the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Whiting School of Engineering, Applied Physics Laboratory, School of Medicine, Sheridan Libraries, and the Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence.
"Every division of Johns Hopkins contributed to making the Coronavirus Resource Center into an invaluable, trusted source of information and guidance relied on by the public and policymakers," Johns Hopkins University President Ron Daniels said. "This interdisciplinary rapid response to the world's worst pandemic in a century exemplifies the critical role research universities have to play in global crises. Johns Hopkins remains committed to providing the public with the most up-to-date research and analysis of the pandemic and will use these same tools to keep building a safer, healthier, more stable global community."
The CRC site was launched to meet an urgent need when governments lacked the capacity to mount comprehensive, real-time public health surveillance and reporting on the spread of SARS-CoV-2. The CRC's U.S. and global data dashboards served as a model for states, counties, and other nations to replicate as they were able to stand up public reporting of public health data.
"After three years of round-the-clock work building and maintaining a 24/7 global resource, we have reached the appropriate time to close this chapter of our response and look to other ways to keep the public safe and informed," said Lauren Gardner, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Systems Science and Engineering. "But if we're needed again, we stand ready and willing to serve."
When Gardner and her graduate student, Ensheng Dong, launched "the Hopkins map," as it was popularly known, the Applied Physics Laboratory quickly stepped in to expand and scale the dashboard to meet intense global demand. The university then invested in the establishment of the full Coronavirus Resource Center, which launched on March 3, 2020, and added a U.S. county-level dashboard developed by the Bloomberg Center for Government Excellence
