The COVID Tracking Project was founded on March 7, 2020 in an effort to bring together relevant data and track ongoing cases and testing of Covid-19 throughout the United States. The project was result of independent efforts of Jeff Hammerbacher, founder and general partner at Related Sciences who built an initial tracking spreadsheet and journalists Robinson Meyer and Alexis Madrigal who built a similar tracker for their story on Covid-19 in The Atlantic. These efforts were combined on March 7, at which time a call for volunteers went out to help keep the data updated, tune process, develop scrapers and make a website.
The COVID Tracking Project is lead by Alexis Madrigal. Erin Kissane is the managing editor, and they have a team of volunteers to keep their data up-to-date.
The project collects information from 50 States, the District of Columbia and 5 other United States territories to provide testing data. They work to include positive and negative results, pending tests, total people tested for by state and district based on their reporting.
Through their website, The COVID Tracking Project also offers raw data on spreadsheets and an API users can download and plug-in for a visualization of the data.
Timeline
People
Adra Graves
Volunteer
Alex Rubinsteyn
Volunteer
Alexis Madrigal
Founder and Project Lead
Colin Popell
Volunteer
Dustin Preisler
Volunteer
Dylan Smith
Volunteer
Ed Hodder
Volunteer
Elliott Klug
Volunteer
Erin Kissane
Managing Editor
Esther Kim
Volunteer
Ethan Marcotte
Volunteer
J. Peter Donald
Volunteer
JD Maresco
Volunteer
Jeff Hammerbacher
Founder
Jeff SIlver
Volunteer
Jeremia Kimelman
Volunteer
Josh Ellington
Volunteer
Julia Kodysh
Volunteer
Julia Ledur
Volunteer
Kai Curry
Volunteer
Katerina Dimitratos
Volunteer
Katherine Paur
Volunteer
Lucas Gonze
Volunteer
Luke Herman
Volunteer
Mat Marquis
Volunteer
Further reading
America Isn't Testing for the Most Alarming Coronavirus Cases
Robinson Meyer
Web
March 13, 2020
Exclusive: The Strongest Evidence Yet That America Is Botching Coronavirus Testing
Robinson Meyer, Alexis C. Madrigal
Web
March 6, 2020
How to Understand Your State's Coronavirus Numbers
Alexis C. Madrigal
Web
March 12, 2020
Key Source of COVID-19 Testing & Infection Data
Josh Marshall
Web
March 7, 2020
The 4 Key Reasons the U.S. Is So Behind on Coronavirus Testing
Olga Khazan
Web
March 13, 2020
The Dangerous Delays in U.S. Coronavirus Testing Haven't Stopped
Robinson Meyer, Alexis C. Madrigal
Web
March 9, 2020
U.S. Lags in Coronavirus Testing After Slow Response to Outbreak
Larry Buchanan, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Allison McCann
Web
March 17, 2020
Company
Data sharing
Big data
Jeff Hammerbacher
Robinson Meyer
