Baffling Coronavirus Map Keeps NYC In The Dark

NEW YORK CITY — Residents of United Hospital Fund Neighborhood zone 408 who tested positive for COVID-19 make up between 51.26 and 65.41 percent of the region's population to receive tests.

Get it? Yeah, neither do we.

The Health Department released Friday a difficult-to-interpret map of novel coronavirus cases in New York City, one day after a Wall Street Journal reporter called out Mayor Bill de Blasio for a lack of transparency.

"You have to release more detailed data on cases and deaths," Katie Honan told de Blasio. "It's negligent that you're not ... please, everyone has to get this data."

De Blasio lashed back at Honan, "If you believe it's your role to editorialize in the middle of your question, that's your right as an American."

"I don't believe that not only is it not negligent," he said. "I would say to you it's the exact opposite."

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Yet less than 24 hours later, a new map appeared on the Department of Health's COVID-19 that tracks the percentage of patients testing positive by neighborhood.

Neighborhoods are designated by numbers instead of name — 408 is Jamaica, Queens, by the way — and the percentages are not connected to population data but to those tested.

The number of people tested per zone? Not included.

The population for zone? Not included.

Some New Yorkers were baffled.

"Anyone from NYC area who can parse this heat map of Covid-19?" asked Twitter user @_mzishi_.

Others were not.

"Map is pretty clear," tweeted Devin Balkind. "It's showing that the administration has no interest in transparency."

De Blasio himself admitted the map was flawed due to the uneven testing that occurred before the city made criteria more strict.

"The information we have is skewed," de Blasio said. "This information only tells you part of the pattern because the testing has been so inconsistent."

The closest New Yorkers can get to local numbers are the borough breakdowns published in a separate document.

As of Friday morning, Queens has 8,214 cases, Brooklyn had 6,750 cases, The Bronx had 4,655 cases, Manhattan had 4,478 cases and Staten Island had 1,440 cases for a citywide total of 25,573, data show.

And 366 New York City had lost their lives to the virus, data show.

Honan is not the first reporter to call out the Mayor's office for failing to provide a level of information made available in Los Angeles, North Carolina and South Korea.

ProPublica published Wednesday a thorough report on the lack of local New York City data and the effect it had on journalists, health care workers and the public.

Dr. Michael Augenbraun, director of the infectious diseases division at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, told ProPublica, “I think it would be useful to us in the hospitals to get a detailed situational appraisal, to know how much of the burden we are confronting.”

But ProPublica's analysis also notes there could be a dark side to releasing location-driven data.

"Around the country, there have been disturbing reports of bias attacks against Asian Americans by assailants blaming Chinese communities for the spread of the virus," the report reads.

Hostilities mounted in New York City to the point where the Attorney General's office felt obligated to launch a novel coronavirus hate crime hotline.

Yet Honan wrote on Twitter Friday afternoon she was glad to see the city releasing information to the public and promised to keep pushing for more.

"It's not perfect, since we don't have raw numbers," Honan wrote. "We will all keep asking for better data."

Coronavirus In NYC: What's Happened And What You Need To Know