Hospital Bed and COVID-19 race data unveil substantial health disparities.

I recently finished working on data visualization in Tableau to display COVID19 data from the Coronavirus racial dashboard.

After automating a script in python to download the COVID19 data everyday and adding hospital bed and census data, a clearer picture of the health disparities with COVID19 emerged. I presented an early version of the dashboard at #BlackInDataWeek held by @blackindata and @blacktides1.

This data dashboard is especially relevant to now with record rates of people hospitalized for COVID19 in the United States. It would be helpful to know how states are the disparities in access to hospital beds are located. Also, it would be beneficial to know in which states are different races being deeply impacted.

The dashboard displays critical information that shows that the highest percentage of deaths for black people from COVID19 have been in DC, Maryland, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Georgia. While for American Indian and Alaska Native population, the highest percentage of deaths have been in New Mexico, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and South Dakota.

This map with ICU beds is informative for knowing which states to allocate hospitals more funding and resources for intensive care beds.

As you can see, COVID19 has exposed problems in our health care system and the country. These problems have existed for years, but they need to be addressed. I am glad resources exist like Tableau and Python so I could share this dashboard. However, more work needs to be done. I know that hospital resources can vary by each county within a state. Yet, I have not seen county-level data to create a similar dashboard including race data at the county level. If you see county level, feel free to contact me on Twitter @ahobby9.