New Delhi, Mar 25 : Tracking the coronavirus pandemic in various parts of the world is but a click away with scientists developing live, interactive maps on user-friendly applications to help researchers, public health authorities as well as the general public.
One such website, covidvisualizer.com, developed in the US, provides users the option of clicking on a country or territory of their interest to see the number of COVID-19 cases, deaths, and recoveries in the place.
The black and red interface features a slowly revolving globe that users can stop at the country of their choice.
The aim of the website, developed by Navid Mamoon and Gabriel Rasskin from Carnegie Mellon University, is to provide a simple, interactive way to visualise the impact of COVID-19, the researchers said.
We wanted people to be able to see this as something that brings us all together. It’s not one country, or another country; it’s one planet — and this is what our planet looks like today, the team wrote on its website.
The map uses data from real time updates on Worldometre, a platform that provides counters and real-time statistics for diverse topics, utilising reliable sources from around the world.
Similar to covidvisualizer.com, the COVID-19 Global Case Tracker’ interactive map provides users with the most up-to-date information on the coronavirus pandemic that, according to the Johns Hopkins University, has affected more than 435,000 people and claimed 19,625 lives.
Professor Lauren Gardner at the Johns Hopkins University in the US built the interactive dashboard with her graduate student Ensheng Dong to capture all confirmed COVID-19 cases, fatalities and recoveries.
What we are doing is tracking the total cumulative cases of COVID-19 from around the world. The red circles in the map represent the total number of reported confirmed cases to date by region, Gardner said in a video while discussing how the COVID-19 dashboard is built and maintained.
You can click on a location, and it zooms it into a map, and then you can highlight the specific stats for that region, she said.
A chart in the map indicates the number of confirmed cases for specific countries, states and cities.
The data also shows how many people have recovered after being diagnosed with COVID-19.
Users have to click on each point on the map to obtain information associated with reported cases in each city and country.
First made public on January 22, the map is maintained in near real-time throughout the day through a combination of manual and automated updating.
The dashboard uses data sourced from the WHO, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control, as well as other private and public institutions.
The World Health Organization is also tracking COVID-19 cases around the world in real-time.
The WHO COVID-19 situation map shows the rise in novel coronavirus infections from January to now.
The zoomable blue and white map provides a search option to look for country-specific COVID-19 cases, including the number of infected, mortality and recovered.
It also provides uses with visual graphics of the number of cases, and the trend curve of cumulative cases in the form of charts.
