COVID-19 Testing and Vaccination Locations in the US

My grandparents are my favorite people in the world, and while I normally see them every couple of months, the COVID-19 pandemic has meant being away from them for the longest time in my life. Given that my they are over 75, they're at high-risk for COVID-19, so for they're own safety, they've stayed inside their home for months on end. But being away from their children, grandchildren, and friends has been tough for them, and my family and I are eager to see them soon, in the safest way possible.

In order to reunite with my family very safely, my grandparents would have to get vaccinated, and the rest of us (my cousins, parents, aunt, etc) would have to get tested. When looking for the closest available places to get tested and vaccinated, we were overwhelmed by the volume, format, and conflicting content of the resources currently available online.

I feared that the confusion surrounding this research process might turn certain people off to taking safety precautions--choosing to take the risk of possibly transmitting COVID-19 rather than parse the overwhelming amount of information out there.

Inspired by this experience, I set out to make simple, straight-forward maps and an accompanying dashboard that are easy for everyone--even grandparents--to use to begin their research into the best ways to stay safe before leaving quarantine/isolation.

The first step in creating a dashboard was to make two maps, one with COVID-19 testing locations and one with COVID-19 vaccination locations. I chose a blue and purple color scheme (respectively) since a member of my family is color blind and therefore he has trouble seeing reds and greens, colors which are often used in COVID-19 maps.

The user can click on each dot to reveal a pop-up with the name of the facility offering the test/vaccine, the county and state/territory its located in, and its specific address.

To make the data more user-friendly, I put the maps next to one another and into a dashboard.

I accompanied these maps with a list of the locations, organized by county in alphabetical order, which the user can click on to zoom into that site.

Additionally, I included counts of the currently available locations of each kind. I have found it interesting to watch these counts--especially the vaccination locations--increase dramatically over the past few days.

While I intended this data to be designed for user-driven purposes, the data is also interesting to analyze from an academic perspective.

When the data is put into a heat map format, it is clear to see that both testing and vaccination locations are concentrated in highly-populated, metropolitan areas.

It makes sense to have these resources available in areas with large populations, as that is where the majority of COVID-19 cases in the US are located.

It is interesting to wonder why vaccine rollout has occurred primarily in the handful of cities--predominately Philadelphia--that is has so far.

Since beginning this project, my grandparents were able to get the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine--with a little bit of help from my dashboard.

I hope that as testing and vaccines become more widely available in the US, families and friends across the country (and world) carry out the research required--whether it be through the use of my dashboard or any other information out there--to ensure that physically reuniting is done in the safest way possible.

Sources:

GISCorps COVID-19 Testing Locations in the United States Symbolized by Status, URSIA’s GISCorps

Covid19 Vaccination Locations in the United States, URSIA’s GISCorps

Lynne Shallcross/KHN illustration; Getty Images