50 States (and Counties) Divided: COVID-19 Cases and Testing Centers

(26 May 2020)  COVID-19 response in any country with a population size and dispersion like the United States, China, and Russia, brings inherent challenges that are only aggravated by the digital divide, logistical realities, and social attitudes and biases. AllClear, a New York City non-profit dedicated to empowering communities with technology and data to overcome COVID-19 and get back on track, gives us an opportuntity for the first step in a data-based look into how the number of testing centers across US counties stacks up relative to population and COVID-19 cases to date.

What does the data tell us?

While in general, there is a positive relationship between the number of testing centers and population per county (as well as between the number of centers and confirmed cases), there is a huge dispersion across US counties. This may point to substantial differences in the capacity of testing centers - a critical gap in this data - or deficiencies in funding and resourcing for testing facilities as counties compete for state funding and states compete for federal funding. Following are a couple case examples we pulled from the data worthy of further investigation:

• Hamilton County, Ohio. With a population of more than 800,000 and nearly 2,500 confirmed COVID-19 cases, Hamilton county has one COVID-19 testing center. In contrast, similarly populated Snohomish county, Washington and Multnomah county, Oregon have comparable confirmed COVID-19 cases but 41 and 83 testing centers, respectively.
• Queens county, New York. As prominently covered in US media, Queens has suffered extensive community spread. With the second-highest amount of confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the US and the 11th largest population, Queens has only 34 COVID-19 testing centers. This is almost four times less than in King county, Washington, which has a comparable number of confirmed cases and deaths similar population total.