The COVID Racial Data Tracker

The COVID-19 pandemic isn’t affecting all communities the same way. The COVID Racial Data Tracker tracks this inequity by collecting, publishing, and analyzing racial data on the pandemic from across the United States. It is a collaboration of the COVID Tracking Project and the Antiracist Research & Policy Center.

The initial dataset

The CTP began in spreadsheets, and we’re rolling out the first data release for the COVID Racial Data Tracker in the same way.

• Racial data tracker dataset (beta release—web version, CSV): We’ve compiled the racial and ethnic data that states are reporting for several COVID-19 data categories so that other researchers can begin to work with, analyze, and visualize this information. This is a challenging dataset to compile and code, and our data sources remain in flux, but we offer this beta release for full transparency. We appreciate your feedback at racial.data@covidtracking.com as we work toward building a complete dataset and getting it into our API and onto the website.
• Spreadsheet-based dashboard (beta release): Our team has also begun to build a dashboard for interested researchers and the general public for easy comparisons with demographic data. This is also a beta effort and feedback is welcome at racial.data@covidtracking.com.

So much racial data is still missing

While many states are starting to release racial data, very few release comprehensive data. We’re advocating to change that, and you can, too. We built our state reporting completeness tracker for internal use to calculate our new state data quality grades, but you can also use this sheet to learn which states report which kinds of data until we have a simpler, public-facing system.

About the COVID Racial Data Tracker

This project began when Ibram X. Kendi, the executive director of the Antiracist Research & Policy Center, wrote a series of essays in The Atlantic about the urgent need to gather demographic information to understand the outbreak and protect vulnerable communities. The federal government’s failure to assemble this data has left it to us to produce this resource for journalists, researchers, advocates, and the public. See our announcement post on the project blog for more info.