Mary Ferdon
The local COVID-19 Community Task Force has decided to put its website that included data on community transmission of the virus on “pause” due to low traffic.
Last month, the city of Columbus, Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. and Columbus Regional Health jointly agreed to put the website on “pause” for now, said Mary Ferdon, the city’s executive director of administration and community development.
Over the course of the pandemic, the website, covid19communitytaskforce.org, has contained periodic updates of COVID-19 hospitalizations at Columbus Regional Hospital and other metrics, links to virtual press conferences with local officials, information about small business loans, updates from local health officials, links to vaccination sites, among other information.
Currently, the website states that it “is no longer being updated,” but still includes links to information about COVID-19 testing, vaccines, the Indiana Department of Health’s COVID-19 dashboard, as well as some information in Spanish.
“The traffic to the site was minimal, and it made more sense to direct people wanting more information on testing and vaccinations to various sites which are linked on our website,” Ferdon said. “Those sites include CRH, the state of Indiana, the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.) We also have a link in Spanish for our Spanish-language residents.”
The website was launched on March 24, 2020, shortly after the formation of the community task force as the initial wave of COVID-19 swept across the country.
The task force, which was formed in February 2020, includes representatives from CRH, the Columbus mayor’s office, Bartholomew County Health Department, Bartholomew County Emergency Management, BCSC and Cummins Inc.
The task force has met numerous times since then to discuss and coordinate the community-wide response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In April, the task force scaled back community transmission reporting based on CDC’s metrics for community risk.
The decision from the local task force comes as the Indiana Department of Health announced last month that it would scale back its statewide COVID-19 dashboard and only update it weekly on Wednesdays, instead of every weekday.
Over the past month, COVID-19 has killed two Jennings County residents, one Bartholomew County resident and one Jackson County resident, according to the most recent update on the Indiana Department of Health’s statewide dashboard.
Over roughly the past week, COVID-19 hospitalizations at CRH have hovered between five and seven, the hospital said. There were six people hospitalized at CRH with coronavirus infections on Thursday, including one person listed in critical condition.
A total of 252 Bartholomew County residents have died from the virus since the pandemic began.
