Medical Examiner COVID-19 Dashboard

About the Program

Category: Health (Best in Category)

Year: 2021

In April 2020, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office and Bureau of Technology teamed up to provide the public with crucial information about COVID-19 deaths. They created first-of-their-kind interactive dashboards, maps and an open dataset providing the public with a geographic visualization of every COVID-19 death since the beginning of the pandemic. The maps and dashboard are populated by an online database, updated every day at 6:00am and 4:00pm. All information is open to the public through the County's website. Information provided includes the cause and manner of death, demographic information about the deceased, the city of residence, and the resident’s zip-code. This program was created to provide transparency and real-time data to public health agencies, researchers, law enforcement, journalists and the broader public as our County grapples with the COVID pandemic. The maps and dataset were also made public to help reduce the number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests received by the Medical Examiner's Office.