Compare active COVID-19 cases between countries relative to the population in real-time — Know where to travel and which areas to avoid during Coronavirus
Many corona dashboard visualizations focus only on the total number of cases, lacking information on what is the current COVID-19 status in the country and making it difficult to compare different countries between each other. The interactive Corona Status Dashboard lets users examine and compare active coronavirus cases between countries and regions relative to the size of the population, which helps people to make more responsible travel decisions and stay safe during the coronavirus pandemic.
COVID-19 metrics relative to the population and time
To compare the development of active COVID-19 cases, a common metric used in the news, Johns Hopkins University reports, and the World Health Organization website is “new confirmed COVID-19 cases per 100 000 inhabitants” or “new confirmed cases per 1 million inhabitants”. To understand the actual corona status in a country, the starting point is to understand the cases relative to the population of the country. Without remembering the populations of countries by heart, it is difficult to understand what the number of cases actually means for the countries. However, countries with very small populations can experience sudden changes more likely and can reach a high overall infection rate faster than countries with larger populations, which is good to keep in mind when evaluating the corona status relative to the population.
The second step in figuring out active corona cases over time is to calculate the “total cases in the last 7 days” or “total cases in the last 14 days”. These metrics give a better indication of what is the corona situation in the country right now rather than focusing on the number of total cases since the pandemic started. Some countries suffered from the virus at the beginning of the outbreak but are now doing better whereas in some areas the virus is spreading exponentially as we speak.
Using a total number of cases in the last 7 days or 14 days instead of daily cases makes the data more robust and reduces single day spikes in data. For example, some countries don’t report COVID-19 cases during the weekend, meaning that every Monday there is a spike that also contains new cases during the weekend while reported cases on the weekend are marked as zeros. However, the website also supports new cases on a daily basis, to help examine patterns by day of the week, and to explore the exact number of new cases daily.
By combining these two metrics, “cases relative to 100 000 inhabitants” and “cases in the last 14 days” we get a solid metric to track corona status in a country. This metric has also been considered by many governments while setting the quarantine limits for travelers arriving in the country. For example, in Finland, the quarantine recommendation applies currently for travelers from countries that exceed “25 new cases per 100 000 inhabitants in the last 14 days”.
Compare cases between countries and regions from official data sources
Corona Status by zuzze.tech lets you compare any countries in the world to each other and see the development of new confirmed cases, recovered cases, and deaths over time since January 2020 when Johns Hopkins CSSE started documenting global coronavirus cases. As all values are presented relative to the size of the population, we can use the same Y-axis for all countries and compare countries with each other.
The website lets users choose the data source between Johns Hopkins CSSE and Corona Tracker and displays the values in a user-friendly visual dashboard that is also easy to use on mobile. Often values between data sources are the same, but especially in larger countries values between data sources may slightly vary. Johns Hopkins CSSE (Center for Systems Science and Engineering) data is sourced directly from their official GitHub repository, whereas Corona Tracker uses also additional data sources on top of Johns Hopkins CSSE such as WHO, CDC, ECDC, NHC of the PRC, DXY, and QQ. While Johns Hopkins CSSE started reporting cases since the 22nd of January 2020, Corona Tracker reports can date back to earlier or later than that depending on the selected country.
The population values of the app use 2020 population values reported by United Nations (UN) and these values are also used in World Health Organization’s (WHO) corona site. Note that values relative to population may vary between websites as some websites may use older population values or different sources. On the website, you can find the population used in the calculations on top of the country table. If data is not yet reported for the day, the table will display “Not available” in the table and there are no data points for these days displayed in the graph.
The website also lets you compare cases in different states of the US to each other. The US State data is sourced from Johns Hopkins CSSE and can be used to display US state confirmed cases and US state deaths. Below you can see an example of new Coronavirus cases relative to population in some states.
Additionally, the website contains more detailed information about Switzerland and Finland, due to the dashboard creator’s close connection to these countries.
For Finnish regions, data is sourced from THL (Terveyden- ja Hyvinvoinninlaitos) Open Data, which is the official data source of Finland for COVID-19. If Finland is selected on the view, the user can also see the Finnish government’s recommended quarantine limit on the graph. This line can be removed if the user removes Finland from selected countries or uses other metrics than “new cases in the last 14 days”. User can also compare THL’s total Corona values for Finland by selecting “Finland (THL)” from the menu instead of “Finland”, which is sourced from the data source user has selected (Johns Hopkins or Corona Tracker).
For Swiss canton data, the website uses Open Government Data by Canton Zürich from Opendata.swiss, and this project is now featured on their website after they monitored the Swiss canton numbers and confirmed their correctness. There are differences between reporting frequency between cantons and some cantons like Vaud can report multiple days at once, whereas some cantons like Zürich can report their values multiple times a day.
If you would like to see other regional data on the Corona Status, you can leave a feature request on the website.
Information updated real-time with the data source
The Corona Status website is updating real-time with the used data sources, which is usually once a day for Johns Hopkins CSSE and more frequently for other data sources. In addition to capturing new cases and deaths based on the latest live data, updates can also be made retrospectively to correct counts on previous days as needed based on subsequent information received. These changes will be visible also on the Corona Status whenever the update happens in the original data source.
In some cases, the Corona status website gives relevant information even faster than the countries’ official visualizations that update often less frequently. For example in the case of Finnish regional data, Corona Status updates can be even 3 days ahead of the data that is visible in the official data visualization Koronakartta by THL. Corona Status gives also additional information from Finnish regions like daily cases per region which are not displayed anywhere else than in the raw text data reported by THL.
Explore corona waves over time
The website allows users to see the history of new coronavirus cases since January 2020 when Johns Hopkins CSSE started officially reporting COVID-19 data. Corona Status shows for example in which countries the new COVID-19 waves are already stronger than the first one and how the waves between different countries correlate with each other.
Global Corona Status at a glance
In addition to country comparison, the website also gives an overview of the global COVID-19 status using global graphs and a world map, which can also be used as an inspiration to find interesting countries for the country comparison. This data is sourced from Worldometers as well as from CoronaTracker mentioned earlier, and this data is usually updated multiple times a day.
Designed users in mind
The website is designed using iterative design cycles with user-centered principles in mind and is constantly improved based on user feedback that users can send on the About page of Corona Status. The web app is working on all devices with an internet connection without the need of downloading or signing up and it is optimized for mobile, tablet, laptop, and desktop devices. For convenience, users can save their favorite countries as favorites in their device if they like, so that next time when the same user opens the site on the same device and browser, they will see their favorite countries as a default without needing to add the countries again one by one.
Whether you are willing to monitor the corona status in specific countries or looking for inspiration where you could travel in these difficult times, Corona Status gives a quick way to get the answer you are looking for. Although the website is connected to official data sources, it is good to keep in mind that governments will often evaluate their COVID-19 restrictions only periodically or use additional criteria when setting travel restrictions. The website is meant to be used as an inspiration to explore destinations as well as to indicate potential future government restrictions. Remember to always check countries’ official active travel restrictions given by the government before traveling.
The creator of the website is a software developer, data visualizer, and designer Susanna Nevalainen, who has earlier visualized for example Large Hadron Collider data at CERN and 5G data center data at Nokia. With her newest side project Corona Status, she wants to share user-friendly data visualizations connected to reliable data sources to help more people to make responsible travel decisions and stay safe during the Coronavirus pandemic.
