New State Coronavirus Dashboard Shows Trends In RI

PROVIDENCE, RI — Close watchers of the Rhode Island Department of Health's coronavirus data website no doubt noticed a change this past week. On Wednesday, Gov. Gina Raimondo announced a change to the state's data graphs, focusing more on trends.

Each Tuesday, the graphs, which show the state's percent positive rate, new hospital admissions and new cases of the virus, will be updated with the previous week's data, Raimondo said. Along with data trends in bar graphs, each graph also has a red line at the top, delineating the threshold of safety. At this time, Rhode Island's data remains well below these lines.

On the right side of the graph, a figure compare the current week's data to that of the week before, along with an arrow showing if the data is trending up or down.

An upward trending arrow is not necessarily a cause of concern, Raimondo said, as long as the data stays below the red line.

The decision to shift the focus of the dashboard was not taken lightly, Raimondo said, and was made in consultation with several health experts.