Mayo Clinic unveils COVID-19 tracking website

After six months of using and refining a COVID-19 case tracking website for its internal use across four states where it has medical facilities, Mayo Clinic on Thursday made that tool available to the public.

The online tool lets you click on every county in every state in the country to see in nearly real time how many cases they have and how the cases have trended over the past two months.

"We thought there was value for the consumer to also be able to see this and to inform them and have knowledge about what’s going on in their community and also to link it to additional Mayo Clinic information," said Dr. Henry Ting, a cardiologist, health researcher and educator at Mayo Clinic.

Ting says the COVID case tracking tool has allowed Mayo to predict hospital case surges. The public website doesn’t currently offer a "predictive" model, but it eventually will.

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"Predictions always have uncertainty in them, but we have a lot of confidence in our model," he said. "We’ve been using it for the last six months, and it’s been incredibly accurate in our hands. And I think our model has a unique approach, and we’ve been able to predict a rise and surge in cases as well as a fall and plateau in many of our hospitals across four states."

The website will be especially helpful for people who are considering traveling for vacation, like to the North Shore by Duluth, or to visit family in places such as Florida or Arizona.

"This is really targeted to people and the county where they work and live as well as potential areas they might visit or have family and friends and want to check on them," Ting said.

Mayo compiles its information from a variety of sources to give it the most up-to-date and accurate information available. Then it’s up to individuals to determine how best to use the information to assess their own risk level if they decide to travel.