Release Log

• v2.0.0 Friday, March 19, 2021

  Signal Changes

  • Replace “Vaccine Acceptance” with signal including both already received the vaccine and definitely or probably choose to get vaccinated.
  • Change “People Wearing Masks” signal to its latest revision
  • Add “COVID Symptom Searches on Google” signal to map and COVIDcast 2.0
  • Change survey result signals to their latest revisions with the option to explore old revisions

  New Features

  This release introduces the new mobile-first based COVIDcast website with a fresh new design.

• v1.12.4 Tuesday, January 19, 2021

  This release improves the UX of the survey dashboard for both desktop and mobile experience.

  New Features

  • #724, #717 Survey dashboards improvements

  Bug-fixes

  • #719 (re: #718) fix Export Data bug

• v1.12.3 Tuesday, January 12, 2021

  Signal Changes

  • Add “Vaccine Acceptance” signal to map and survey dashboard

  New Features

  • #709, #710, #708 Improve loading performance especially for the survey dashboard
  • #712 Improve map style

  Bug-fixes

  • #713 fix trend color for decreasing trends

• v1.12.2 Monday, January 4, 2021

  Bugfix release for changed signal

  Signal Changes

  • Reverted “COVID-Related Doctor Visits” signal

  Bug-fixes

  • #703 rename COVIDCast to COVIDcast

  Others

  • #704 Unique bundle names

• v1.12.1 Tuesday, December 29, 2020

  Bugfix release for improved mobile experience

  Improvements

  • #700 Improve mobile experience

• v1.12.0 Wednesday, December 23, 2020

  This release introduces the new National COVID Survey Dashboard showing aggregated survey results. In addition, the overall style of COVIDcast has been adapted to the new website.

  New Features

  • #600 National COVID Survey Dashboard
  • #688 (re: #536) Default ratio cases/deaths
  • #616, #678 UIKit Adaptations
  • #692, #671 (re: #651) Simplify URL parameters
  • #677 (re: #632) Compute mega counties (Rest of ...) population on the fly
  • #658 (re: #485, #639) Additional export options

  Improvements

  • #689 (re: #687) Change date shortcuts
  • #676 Improve Map Selection UX
  • #659 (re: #656) Shrink card header font size, adjust spacing.

  Bug-fixes

  • #690 (re: #686) Add special case for old safari
  • #674 Refactor: use vega resize method
  • #666 (re: #664, #665) Add HRR Population data and fix Orlando bug

• v1.11.1 Friday, December 11, 2020

  Signal Changes

  • Removed “COVID Symptom Searches on Google” signal.
  • Replaced “COVID-Related Doctor Visits” with new signal from Change Healthcare. For more details see: chng:smoothed_outpatient_cli

• v1.11.0 Wednesday, December 2, 2020

  This release changes COVIDcast from a complete site to an embedded component, primarily to the www-main repository, which serves the Delphi homepage. This means that instead of having both covidcast.cmu.edu and delphi.cmu.edu separately, we will now have delphi.cmu.edu and covidcast will live at delphi.cmu.edu/covidcast.

  The are only minor changes to the COVIDcast visualization itself, which was why this is marked as 1.11.0 instead of 2.0.

  Signal Changes

  • “COVID Searches on Google” is now “COVID Symptom Searches on Google”. For more details see: google-symptoms sum_anosmia_ageusia_smoothed_search signal.
  • New “Bar Visits” signal from Safegraph. For more details see: safegraph bars_visit_num and bars_visit_prop.
  • New “Restaurant Visits” signal from Safegraph. For more details see: safegraph restaurants_visit_num and restaurants_visit_prop
  • “Away from home” signals replaced by smoothed versions to remove the weekend effect. For more details see: safegraph full_time_work_prop_7dav and part_time_work_prop_7dav

  New features

  • #610 (re: #593) Hospital referal regions now available as a geo type
  • #636 (re: #631) Change to embedded version

  Improvements

  • #629 (re: #599) Additional export infos
  • #650 (re: #649) Research disclaimer
  • #628 (re: #624) Limit add another to same geo level
  • #630 (re: #598) Restore focus upon dialog close
  • #587 (re: #460, and others) Generate changelog from PRs
  • #653 More robust missing meta data handling
  • #633 (re: #625) Improve detail view (axis) labels
  • #641 (re: #623) Preserve modified date range while DetailView is displayed.
  • #575 (re: #569) Improve whitespace for small multiples
  • #588 (re: #586) Improve hover behavior on charts
  • #614 (re: #589) Render line chart with clipped regions.
  • #454 Create staging environment setup
  • #604 Add testing environment
  • #591 Improve vega tooltip styling
  • #585 (re: #582) Possible fix for single region vega
  • #573 (re: #484) Improve chart headers and layout

  Bug-fixes

  • #635 Date range initial selection was lost
  • #605 (re: #602, #603) County name generation
  • #652 (re: #637) Reduce layout flicker on Region Details
  • #654 Style: fix some of the most obvious uikit bugs
  • #643 (re: #586) Avoid flickering tooltips on small multiples
  • #638 Bugfix: detecting proper death signal
  • #617 (re: #615) Use correct field when computing max of values.
  • #613 (re: #611) Fix tooltip for calendar option
  • #608 (re: #607) Fix mouseout and mouseover flickers

• v1.10.0 Wednesday, October 28, 2020

  New Features

  • #546 New tab Single location view

  Minor Features

  • #552 Use local maxima for top 10
  • #558 Update population data based on indicator data
  • #530 Generate signal constants from a document
  • #571 Making toggle selection darker to indicate selected status
  • #574 Add day ticks and week gridlines for Detail view
  • #524 Re-enable side panel toggle
  • #525 Search icon and na hint
  • #526 Add background to map title for visibility
  • #542 Tune export data tab
  • #544 Add signal coverage info
  • #545 Add date shortcuts to “Displaying” bar
  • #568 Detail view UI improvements (add ticks / improve timeline dragger)
  • #556 Add download button to detail views
  • #551 Improve bubble view in areas with no data (enforce 0 is no bubble)
  • #548 Change max mobile width for mode nav buttons

  Bug-fixes

  • #523 Incorporate hotfixes for 1.9.x series
  • #566 Improve vega highlight performance
  • #541 Accessibility: Add aria label to map
  • #460 Add missing county level to quidel
  • #535 Incomplete imputation in detail view
  • #514 Accessibility: set aria option for no-uislider

• v1.9.3 Friday, October 9, 2020

  • Added the People Wearing Masks signal

• v1.9.2 Tuesday, October 6, 2020

  • Switched the signal displayed for Hospital Admissions from one that includes both medical claims and electronic medical records to one that only includes claims data.

• v1.9 Wednesday, September 30, 2020

  • Top 10 view
  • Comparisons mode to compare indicators between multiple locations (bottom right)
  • Spikes and bubble maps enabled for all signals
  • Export Data tab
  • Signal descriptions provided as “?” popup for all signals

• v1.8 Wednesday, September 9, 2020

  • Small multiples of all indicators in a right-side panel, when you select a location.
  • More advanced time series charts, including zooming, when you expand an indicator.
  • Improved time-lapse mode that plays animations over time more smoothly.
  • Toggles for Incidence/Cumulative and Counts/Ratios for Cases and Deaths indicators.
  • Improved speed of loading COVIDcast map.
  • Improved mobile support.
  • Numerous minor bug fixes.

• v1.7 Wednesday, August 12, 2020

  • New map: The “COVID-19 Antigen Tests” map indicates the percentage of COVID-19 antigen tests that have come back positive, based on data from Quidel, Inc.
  • Spike maps have been added as an option to visualize case and death indicators, along with bubble maps.
  • The design of the COVIDcast home page has been improved to include navigation to other parts of the site and to other Delphi web pages.
  • Layout improvements to improve the site’s usability on mobile devices.
  • Numerous minor bug fixes.

• v1.6 Wednesday, July 22, 2020

  • Bubble maps have been added as an option to visualize cases and deaths.
  • A calendar date-picker lets the user select any date to display on the map.
  • The 7-day Trend display is temporarily unavailable while technical problems are resolved. It will be re-enabled in a future release.
  • Numerous minor bug fixes.

• v1.5 Wednesday, July 8, 2020

  • The map layout has been redesigned to prevent the controls from obscuring the map.
  • Updated maps: The cases and deaths maps now use data from both Johns Hopkins University and USAFacts. Data from Johns Hopkins University is used for Puerto Rico, while USAFacts is used everywhere else.
  • Numerous minor bug fixes.

• v1.4.1 Wednesday, July 1, 2020

  • New map: The “Hospital Admissions” map indicates the proportion of daily hospital admissions with COVID-related diagnoses, based on data from health system partners.
  • Minor bug and layout fixes.

• v1.4 Wednesday, June 24, 2020

  • Map controls have been revised to more easily select indicators and geographic areas.
  • A new search bar makes it possible to quickly find any county or city of interest.
  • The color scale for increasing and decreasing 7-day trends has been updated to more clearly highlight trends.
  • New maps: The “Away from home” maps use mobile device location data from SafeGraph to estimate the proportion of people spending time outside their homes each day, for either 3-6 hours or more than 6 hours.
  • Map color scales on the cases and deaths maps are now logarithmic, making it easier to see differences among regions with both low rates and high rates.
  • Cases and deaths maps are now based on 7-day averages, rather than reporting figures for a single day.

• v1.3 Wednesday, June 10, 2020

  • The COVIDcast map now includes Puerto Rico. Not all data sources are available for Puerto Rico, but data will be displayed when available.
  • The “Combined” signal now includes standard error bands when viewing the time series plot for a specific geographical area, representing the estimated uncertainty in this signal. This uncertainty comes because the signal is a combination of the other signals which are based on survey estimates or other estimates with margins of error.
  • Tooltips for the official Cases and Deaths signals have been updated to contain the population, raw count, and count per 100,000 people, to help distinguish sparsely-populated areas with one or two cases from dense urban areas with more total cases but an apparently lower rate per 100,000 people.
  • Fixed a bug that inflated the color value for per capita Cases and Deaths relative to the legend.
  • Other small bug fixes and improvements in the COVIDcast map.

• v1.2.1 Thursday, May 28, 2020

  • The “Combined” map has been updated to include the “Symptoms in Community (Facebook)” indicator.

• v1.2 Wednesday, May 20, 2020

  • New map: The “Combined” signal represents a statistical combination of the other indicators, not including the official reports (cases and deaths). For more information how this indicator is calculated, see the details above in the list of indicators.
  • New map: The “Symptoms in Community (Facebook)” map shows the estimated fraction of people who know someone with a COVID-like illness in their local community.
  • The “Surveys (Facebook)” map has been renamed “Symptoms (Facebook)”, to reflect that it asks respondents whether people in their household have COVID-like symptoms.
  • The “Surveys (Google)” map has been removed. This data is still available in the public Epidata API, but new data will not be collected.

• v1.1 Thursday, May 7, 2020

  • Time series plots now include shaded regions showing the standard error of the signal estimates, when available.
  • New map: The “Deaths (JHU)” map shows death ratios (deaths per 100,000 population) due to COVID-19 per day. This reflects official figures from state and local health authorities, as compiled by a team at Johns Hopkins University.
  • New map: The “Confirmed Cases (JHU)” map shows confirmed case ratios (cases per 100,000 population) of COVID-19 per day. This reflects official figures reporting cases confirmed by testing to be COVID-19, as compiled by a team at Johns Hopkins University.
  • The “Flu Testing (Quidel)” map is no longer shown. During flu season, rates of flu tests may have correlated with rates of COVID-like illnesses, as many doctors who suspected COVID-19 conducted flu tests to rule out influenza. However, the end of flu season means few flu tests are currently conducted.
  • Previously, the “Search Trends (Google)” signal reported search volume on each day on the map for the following day; for example, search volume on April 16 would be mapped as occurring on April 17. This is no longer done.

• v1.0 Friday, April 24, 2020

  • Initial public release of COVIDcast.
  • Includes maps of Doctor Visits, Facebook and Google surveys, Google search trends, and Quidel flu testing.