GEMA to halt daily published COVID-19 reports Sept. 5, state shifts to new GIO ‘Data Hub’

The Georgia Emergency Management(GEMA) and Homeland Security Agency will no longer publish the daily COVID-19 Situation Report (SITREP). The daily updates are being replaced by a new web-based COVID-19 Data Hub by the Georgia Geospatial Information, state officials announced.

“In the beginning days of the pandemic, we developed our daily SITREP to supplement the Department of Public Health’s reporting, and provide the public with relevant data regarding hospitalizations, and resources,” said GEMA/HS Director Chris Stallings.

“GIO has created a one-stop shop for all of the data in a format that is more easily accessible, so it makes sense to share this site with the public and shift the resources we were using for the SITREP to other efforts.”

Data in the GEMA/HS SITREP, including hospitalization bed and ventilator capacity, and other information now available on the Georgia COVID-19 Data Hub far exceeds what was being produced manually by GEMA/HS. The move toward the data hub means increased access to COVID-19 information for Georgians. The majority of data on the GIO COVID-19 page is updated once daily at 3 p.m. and converted to the supporting datasets available for download. Some information is updated more frequently giving the most up-to-date snapshot of the COVID-19 situation available.

Users who navigate to the Georgia COVID-19 Data Hub will find the hospitalization data on the dashboard by scrolling down the page to the section titled “Maps of Regional Hospital Capacity.” The maps in this section include hospital numbers by region, and the Medical Facility Patient Census shows the number of COVID-19 patients currently hospitalized overall, and by region. These numbers are updated twice daily as opposed to the once daily updates produced in the GEMA/HS SITREP.

“We encourage all Georgians to utilize this tool to allow them to make the best decisions for themselves, their families, and their businesses in how to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic,” said Stallings.