Rockwall County rolls out new COVID-19 case reporting dashboard

ROCKWALL, TX – August 13, 2020 — Rockwall County is looking to revamp its COVID-19 case reporting with a new dashboard on the county website.

Barbara Neville with the Rockwall County Office of Emergency Management provided some insight about the new COVID-19 reporting dashboard to the Commissioners Court during its regular meeting on Aug. 11. According to Neville, the dashboard provides all of the information in the COVID-19 reports posted regularly on the RCOEM’s Facebook page, plus some more in-depth statistics in a more visually appealing manner.

“Additional information included on the dashboard are the ages of those with positive cases broken out into pie charts and percentages, positivity rates, death rates, average age of death, and the percent of COVID-positive patients in the hospitals and in the ICU,” Neville told the court. “There’s also an Important Information section on the dashboard that can be edited, and impacted facilities like daycares and longterm care facilities.

“There’s a map that shows where the cases are, where the recoveries are and where the active cases are. You can click through on the map and see all of that data. There’s also be a graph that tracks the daily cases so that you can see whether the trend is going up or down.”

Neville said the data reported on the dashboard is verifiable data that they know to be 100 percent accurate.

“We’re continuing to work with the Department of State Health Services to obtain daily case data. Jim Knickerbocker with GIS is verifying all of the data daily that is displayed on our graphic we share on our Facebook page, which will be transitioning to the new dashboard. Every day we go through a 13-page SOP just to get the addresses verified and make sure that they’re allocated to the right cities. It’s a continuing challenge to manage all of this data and make sure our residents, elected officials, and school districts have accurate data that we can stand on.”

Neville also reported that the RCOEM is currently working with a group of volunteers to provide facemasks for the underserved population in the county. The county received a large donation of facemasks during a PPE drive. Neville said the volunteer group is currently working to modify the masks to make them easier to wear, with the goal to distribute them to families in need.

Rockwall County Judge explains more about the new dashboard in the following video released today:

Blue Ribbon News staff report.

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