Dashboard Visualization of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a respiratory illness that is caused by a virus named severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). A summary of the disease along with recommendations for diagnosis and prevention is provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) here.

The spread of COVID-19 has been progressing at an alarming rate. In January 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the outbreak a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) which means that it constitutes a public health risk through the international spread of disease, and it potentially requires a coordinated international response. Today the WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic which the CDC and these authors define as an epidemic that spreads over several countries or continents. In short, COVID-19 is out of control, people are worried, and we need to act quickly to minimize further illness, death, and the downstream impact on our local communities, our country, and the rest of the world.

There are many aspects of COVID-19 diagnosis, treatment, and prevention that demand our attention and resources. One fundamental need during any infectious disease outbreak is to track cases over time. Peter Drucker is credited with saying, "you can't manage what you can't measure," and the principle definitely applies here.

Thanks to an engineering team at Johns Hopkins University, it is now possible for researchers, public health authorities, and the general public to access to an online interactive dashboard that can be used to visualize and track COVID-19 cases in near-real time. Here's a screenshot, and if you visit the dashboard, I think you'll find it fairly self-explanatory.

Initially the dashboard was manually updated twice a day, but the team has since transitioned to a semi-automated process that leverages a variety of data sources. A brief overview of methods are described in this article and this blog. The following figure illustrates that the Johns Hopkins dashboard statistics align well with figures provided by the Chinese CDC and WHO.



Hopefully we will start to see a decline in the number of new cases over time. To achieve that, we should all follow recommendations from the CDC including its Workplace, School and Home Guidance and its Framework for Mitigation. Be safe everyone!

April 24, 2020 Update: Here is another link to the Johns Hopkins University dashboard that contains some more features: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html