A number of readers have asked me for the various websites I have been using in my previous posts on COVID-19.   The following is a list of the sites I have found most the informative and useful.

• World Health Organization Daily Situation Reports – This is the report WHO releases each day showing the number of new and cumulative cases and the number of cumulative and daily fatalities by country.  I have been entering some of the data from this site on a spreadsheet.
• Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Modeling – The IHME is a research center at the University of Washington and is funded by the Gates Foundation.  Their modeling has been widely followed and, according to media sources, is similar to the modeling being used by the White House’s coronavirus task force.  By clicking the green bar near the top of the page where you see “United States of America”, you will get a drop-down menu for individual state projections.  The IHME updates the modeling daily and issues notes about changes in the modeling results.

• The COVID Tracking Project is a website organized by a group of journalists to track various COVID statistics from state health agencies.  It includes a spreadsheet that is undated daily and includes the most comprehensive testing data I have been able to find. In the last few days they also added hospitalizations, ICU beds occupied and ventilators in use.

• This Economist article is the best discussion I have seen that outlines the mechanics of the virus and the prospects for drugs that might mitigate its effects.

• Johns Hopkins has maintained a dashboard with current statistics on COVID.  This website is widely followed by the media.  Because the data is presented in such a summary fashion and with little historical reference, I have not found it particularly helpful.

• Channel 2 and the Houston Chronicle have put together webpages [here] and [here] that show the current number of cases, fatalities and recovering in the Houston region by county and also track the number of new cases daily.

• Texas Health & Human Services maintains a dashboard in the same format as John Hopkins.

Let me share one caveat about the data on COVID-19.  The truth is we know very little.  This virus was discovered just a little over three months ago.  We have a very small amount of data at this point.  And the data we have is coming from disparate sources with different collection methods that likely vary widely.  Unfortunately, as much as we would like to understand the risk we are facing, there is going to be considerable uncertainty for some time.