As COVID-19 continues to spread across the globe, scientists and researchers have been working together to develop the necessary vaccines and treatments to address the pandemic. The challenge has also been taken on by the tech industry. Different startups and tech conglomerates are developing coronavirus trackers that can help the public and medical professionals keep track of infections.
Also Read: Facebook Darkmode: How to do it on Android or Desktop?
According to a Gizmodo report, the former founders of Instagram, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, are currently working on their latest project called Rt.live that will serve as a state-by-state COVID-19 infection tracker. The report said that this new COVID-19 tracker is people-friendly since it can easily be understood and used by anyone. Will this be effective in slowing down the spread of the virus?
Also Read: [BREAKING] Facebook Big Events Canceled Until 2021; Employees Work-From-Home Extend Until May Says Mark Zuckerberg
New COVID-19 Tracker: Instagram founders launch Rt.live
According to Techcrunch's latest report, Krieger and Systrom's new project since leaving the Facebook mothership is called "Rt.live." It's an up-to-date tracker that shows how fast the coronavirus is spreading in each state.
Rt.live measures the average number of individuals who have been infected by the coronavirus. The new tracker shows that a state has a higher spread rate of the virus if the number shown in the data is above one. A state's infection rate recedes when the number is below one.
Among the states, Rt.live shows that Georgia has had the highest infection rate with a score of 1.5 compared to New York, which has only a spreading-rate score of 0.54 because of their shelter-in-place orders.
On April 18, recent data of Rt.live showed that California and Texas have a score of below 1 while Vermont had the lowest infection rate with the best score of 0.33. The charts provided by the project also revealed how Georgia and Washington have been successfully fighting coronavirus infections with a receding score below 1. The data is gathered from Rt.live's modeling system on Github, COVID Tracking Project.
"Kevin has been writing and publishing open-source data analysis notebooks on how to calculate Rt on a daily basis. We wanted to take that work and visualize it so anyone can see how their state is doing at curbing the spread," said Krieger in the Techcrunch report.
Krieger is also developing a directory of local Bay Area restaurants that are selling gift cards called "SaveOurFaves." The goal is to help these small community business stay afloat during the lockdown. Krieger built the project with his wife and made open-sourced so people can build similar websites that can also help their communities in the same way.
