Daily United States COVID-19 data for select cities and counties, May 29, 2020 to October 21, 2020

This dataset by The COVID Tracking Project at The
Atlantic captures the virus’s transmission in 65 cities and
counties across the country. Many of these metropolitan areas only report
the current day’s totals and remove older data from their public health
dashboards so that no historical archive is available. As a result, it’s
often impossible to see the impact of the virus on a particular geography
over time. Our dataset captures this historical information. It is the
only available metropolitan dataset that includes race and ethnicity,
which allows us to improve our understanding of how COVID-19
disproportionately affects communities of color. We have completed our
data collection on this project and want to share what we’ve learned from
viewing COVID-19 at the local level. Five months in, we’ve seen that local
data tells a vastly different story than state-level data. Not only do
trends emerge in city and county data before appearing at the state level,
but state-level data also obscures local patterns.

本数据集由《大西洋》（The Atlantic）旗下的COVID追踪项目（The COVID Tracking Project）编制，收录了全美65个城市与郡的新冠病毒传播态势数据。其中多数大都市区仅会上报当日累计数据，并从其公共卫生数据仪表盘中删除历史数据，导致这些地区无法留存历史存档信息。正因如此，通常难以追踪新冠病毒在特定地区随时间推移产生的影响。
本数据集完整留存了这类历史信息，且是目前唯一可获取的包含种族与族裔数据的大都市区级新冠疫情数据集，有助于我们深化对新冠病毒（COVID-19）如何对有色人种社区造成不成比例影响的认知。
本项目已完成全部数据采集工作，现希望分享我们通过本地层面的新冠疫情观测所得到的研究成果。本项目启动五个月以来，我们发现本地级别的疫情数据与州级数据所呈现的趋势大相径庭：不仅城市与郡级数据中的疫情趋势会早于州级数据显现，州级数据还会掩盖本地层面的疫情传播模式。