COVID-19 Visual Resources
Trends and Patterns for Missouri and the St. Louis Metro Area
This page illustrates the COVID-19 situation in the US, Missouri, and the Missouri portion of the St. Louis metro area. The date indicated on a figure is the most recent day represented in the figure. Note that data for Jackson County includes the parts of Kansas City in other counties.
As of October 21, we have changed our data sources to provide a better, more up-to-date representation of ongoing trends. Specifically, Missouri's Department of Health and Senior Services now makes available the entire time series for much of their data, which is updated daily. Each section of visuals includes descriptions and explanations for its data sources.
Trends and Distribution of Cases and Deaths in the United States
Data for aggregate US trends are from The Atlantic's Covid Tracking Project. The data for the maps of state-level differences are obtained by aggregating the county-level data from USAFacts.
Missouri Trends in Cases, Testing, Hospitalizations, and Deaths
Data for Missouri cases and testing are provided by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services and are all presented as 7-day averages. The state provides these data according to the days that the positive test result was obtained, but it takes time to make the assignment of each case to the appropriate day. To produce more-timely visualizations of the trends, we have used the data according to the days that the cases are reported. Data on deaths come from The Atlantic's Covid Tracking Project and are based on the days that the deaths are reported. The state only provides death data according to the days that the deaths occur, which means that many deaths do not appear in the data until well after they occur and are reported. As a result, the most recent deaths do not appear in the data set, resulting in a large undercount. As our objective is to be on top of the trends, we have chosen to use The Atlantic's data and present it as a 14-day average to smooth out the series and to account for deaths that might have occurred well before being reported. Finally, hospitalization data are from The Atlantic because the series is unavailable from state sources, which provide only the data for the most recent day.
The Distribution of COVID-19 Across Missouri
Data on county-level cases and deaths come from USAFActs.org
The St. Louis Metro Area
Charts for the St. Louis metro area use the county-level case and death data from USAFacts.org
