You can now get comprehensive data on all the COVID-19 cases in Ontario
With cases of COVID-19 skyrocketing across Ontario, the province is no longer providing daily updates regarding the ages, genders, locations and methods of transmission for newly-diagnosed patients.
That's not to say the information isn't still available.
An open datatabase featuring all known pertinent information about each of the province's coronavirus patients — recovered, deceased or still infected — has just been made public through the Ontario Data Catalogue.
The raw data itself isn't much to look at, but its potential uses are endless thanks to the availability of an API for programmers.
Ontario has made its COVID-19 outbreak data available, and right away something jumps out: Look at the bell-shaped curve, which comes down after March 19 or so.https://t.co/Tz4W9MfHnh
— Dan Riskin (@riskindan) April 2, 2020
Is the curve flattening? Maybe!… but also maybe not….1/4
 pic.twitter.com/GP8Lp8Tdrh
Essentially, anyone can use the dynamically-updating dataset to populate a more user-friendly or explicitly analytical web interface, like this COVID-19 dashboard by York's Schulich School of Business or the cumulative confirmed cases tab of flatten.ca's coronavirus heat map.
Ontario also makes the current information available for download in CSV, TSV, JSON and XML record formats.
Users can also, of course, browse through the dataset as it lives now on the government's website, filtering and weighting entries by date of confirmation, patient age group, patient gender, method of acquisition, outcome, reporting public health unit and more.
Ontario now has an open data set, from which I've been able to pull together a similar graph. Not as much of a pronounced decline in new cases as of yet.
— Mike Boos (@mikeboos) April 1, 2020
Stay home if you can, we'll get there. Together. Alone.https://t.co/mwY5mWpPQc pic.twitter.com/PuApSizGAJ
One key problem with the record set, however, is that it appears to be delayed: As of April 2, only 1,915 cases appeared in the database, while 2,392 are currently reported on the province's dedicated COVID-19 web page.
Regardless, the "Confirmed positive cases of COVID19 in Ontario" data explorer could prove a valuable tool for those outside the government to record, track and analyze the spread of 2019 novel coronavirus.
Public Health Ontario is also now providing its own, more detailed summary of cases each morning at 10:30 a.m. This daily epidemiologic summary does not include details about individual cases like the open dataset, but it does track trends and break down the percentage of COVID-19 cases in Ontario by gender, age range, hospitalization status and more.
