LONDON, ONT. -- It’s called the COVID-19 School Dashboard, an online site that reports and maps confirmed school-related COVID-19 cases in publicly-funded elementary and secondary schools across the province.
“It actually gives us the indication of the potential impact in terms of the human impact on the school community wherever that school is and whatever is happening within the context of COVID,” says Dr. Prachi Srivastava, associate professor at the Faculty of Education at Western University.
The dashboard is updated daily from Monday to Friday following the release of school-related COVID-19 case data by the Ontario Ministry of Education.
“It’s not just visualizing where the schools are and how many cases there are, it’s also understanding demographic and the human dimension to that.”
Srivastava says the dashboard does have some lags because the numbers are based on information provided by the ministry.
However, users can find interactive maps, charts and and data tables, all in an easy-to-find one-stop shop.
“I know that this is such a difficult time for everyone when it comes to accessing information such as: What is going on in London? What is going on in my community? What is going on in my neighbourhood?” says Srivastava.
“Maybe there are five different schools in your neighbourhood and you just want to have an idea of what’s happening.”
This is the first version of the dashboard, there are plans to add more indicators, such as the percentage of schools per board affected with cases, and the number and percent of schools with multiple cases.
The dashboard, which launched just days ago, currently only focuses on Ontario data, but there are plans to expand it nationally.
