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Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield (Illustration: Simon Chesterman)
Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield (Illustration: Simon Chesterman)

ScienceMarch 31, 2020

Covid-19: Every New Zealand case, mapped and charted, March 31

Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield (Illustration: Simon Chesterman)
Director general of health Ashley Bloomfield (Illustration: Simon Chesterman)

The second in our new series of charts, graphics and data-visualisations by Chris McDowall, covering the Covid-19 epidemic within New Zealand. We’ll publish the latest set each day on The Spinoff.

This work is entirely funded by the generosity of The Spinoff Members

Information about confirmed and probable cases of Covid-19 in New Zealand is changing rapidly. These posts collate the most recent statistics and presents them as charts and maps. The Ministry of Health typically publishes data updates in the early afternoon, which describe the situation at 9am on the day of release. The Spinoff will release a new version of these data-visualisations each day in the immediate aftermath of the Ministry of Health updates. They will evolve and refine over the coming days and weeks.

Note for users of The Spinoff App: the charts are not supported within the app yet. Please click here to launch in a separate browser window.

This afternoon the director-general of health announced that the number of Covid-19 cases stands at 647 (600 confirmed cases and 47 probable). Seventy-four people have recovered, an increase of 11 over the last 24 hours. Fourteen people are in hospital due to Covid-19. The ministry also reported that they averaged 1,777 Covid-19 lab tests per day during the week ending March 30. A total of 21,384 lab tests have been conducted to date.

The number of active clusters increased from 6 to 14. There are clusters under investigation in Auckland, Southland, Waikato, Wellington, Marlborough, Southland and Hutt City

This maps shows confirmed and probable Covid-19 cases arranged by district health board. Interpret the map in tandem with the following arrow plot.

This arrow plot shows how the count of active cases has changed since yesterday, broken down by district health board. The start of the line is the number of cases yesterday, while the tip of the arrow shows how many there were today. The key thing to note is the large increase in Southern DHB, which has overtaken Auckland as the region with the most cases.

This bar chart shows confirmed and probable cases by the date reported. If you compare the chart carefully with the previous day, you will see a slight increase in the number of confirmed cases for each day. This is due to the lag between testing and reporting. Expect the numbers on the rightmost bars to nudge up each day.

The remaining charts are largely unchanged since yesterday. I intend to dig into both the age group data and international comparisons over the coming days.

Keep going!