Student Builds COVID-19 Tracking Website: GeekWire

A new coronavirus for China emerged in early January, and a 17-year-old student in Mercer Island, Washington, worried about misinformation. Before the disease spread from China, Avi Schiffmann set out make a one-stop website that compiles official data. “The site’s simple homepage consists of quick facts that are updated every 10 minutes, including total confirmed cases, total deaths, countries infected and more,” reports Kurt Schlosser for GeekWire. Information is translated in more than 10 languages and, as the disease spreads, the site provides specifics for provinces, states and cities. “The site, which runs a script to automatically scrape a number of well-sourced sites for the latest data, has attracted more than 2 million unique visitors and gets as many as 300,000 returning visitors each day, setting record site numbers for past two weeks.” The site has evolved into a team effort. Specialists send suggestions and Schiffman responds, and volunteers provide case reports on an interactive Google map. Schiffmann’s next project may be to develop a vaccine progress tracker. Hundreds of supporters around the world cheer his work on Ko-Fi: “You are the hero we need.” According to the site, 86 countries report cases. – YaleGlobal