Boston College launched a redesigned COVID-19 dashboard on Friday night in order to fix a discrepancy in data, Associate Vice President for University Communications Jack Dunn told The Heights. The dashboard now restates testing numbers to reflect the number of undergraduate tests rather than the number of individual undergraduate students tested each week, Dunn said, as some undergraduates are tested more than once in a week.
Some students were tested twice the week they moved in because they were from states considered high-risk, and were called in to be tested again after their initial test. Instances like this caused the number of undergraduates tested and the number of undergraduate tests to differ.
“Essentially, we had apples and oranges,” said Michael Bourque, vice president of Information Technology Services at BC, in reference to the difference between undergraduate “tests” and undergraduates “tested.”
The change in BC’s data reporting comes after The Heights reported Tuesday that the weekly numbers of undergraduates tested on the dashboard did not add up to the cumulative total tests reported. At the time, the cumulative total was 1,014 more tests than the sum of the weekly data.
Bourque also told The Heights that BC is continuing to consider use of CoVerified, a symptoms-reporting and test-scheduling app. The University announced plans to use the app over the summer, but delays in its creation have led the University to use an online tool for self-reporting symptoms instead.
