SAN ANTONIO – The latest dashboard developed by the University of Texas in Austin COVID-19 Modeling Consortium covers the entire state.
Lauren Ancel Meyers, the consortium director, said projecting the spread of the virus not only uses cellphone mobility patterns, it also relies on hospital admissions.
“We are not looking at case counts or test positivity, we are only looking at hospitalization data,” Meyers said. “The reason is that we find that data to be a much more reliable indicator of how the virus is spreading.”
Meyers said that kind of data shows the impact of the virus on hospitals and communities.
The dashboard also includes the projected mortality rates, the reproductive rates of how many will be infected and the spread of new cases.
As of now, a spokeswoman said the consortium has not worked with the Metropolitan Health District.
“This model is one of many that we’re aware of, and they all roughly align," said Metro Health medical director Dr. Junda Woo.