In early March 2020, two journalists, Robinson Meyer and Alexis Madrigal, started constructing a COVID-19 tracking spreadsheet for their investigation in The Atlantic, after not finding a unified official source for testing data in the United States.

Madrigal leads the project, and Erin Kissane joined as its managing editor; Hammerbacher remains an advisor and volunteer.

[8] Data continued to be entered using a spreadsheet, with an API developed for easier public sharing.

[16][17][18] In June 2020, the CDC released a report stating that The COVID Tracking Project's race and ethnicity data may be more complete than the agency's dataset.

[19] The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices used the project's long-term care data to inform its phased vaccine allocation recommendations.