Understanding where COVID-19 hotspots are in the most up to date fashion is essential for deploying testing services and public awareness campaigns. This mapping project reports high test counts by census tract to ensure limited resources are distributed to the areas in most need.
Maps are complied weekly using Louisiana Department of Health data. Positive test counts in each census tract are standardized by 100,000 population. Census tracts with less than 1,000 estimated 2018 residents are not reported by the LDH for privacy protection.
All test and case data are geographically assigned using the patient’s address unless that address is not available. In the event no patient address is available, the zip code of the testing facility are used to assign that record to a parish. Only records with valid patient addresses that can be accurately matched are assigned to census tracts.
Due to Loyola and Tulane University students not being included as residents in the American Community Survey, positive tests results are unable to be standardized per 100,000 population for this specific census tract.
In order to be as accurate as possible, the census tract including the Loyola and Tulane University is not included in the Weekly Positive Test Count map colorization. Data for the tract are able to be viewed by mouseover of map. Data for the tract are included in the Weekly Positive Test Count by Parish and Total Positive Test Count plots.
Data from the Louisiana Department of Health lags by approximately a week for census tracts, as there is processing time required to compile data. The LDH releases new data every Wednesday at noon, and these maps will be updated by 14:00 every Thursday. You may need to reload the page to see new updates.
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