Tracking Covid in India using interactive Dashboards.
With the early onset of covid 19 looming over India in early March, there was not a reliable website or a proper single source to gather data from regarding the number of cases being reported on daily basis.
In the field of data science this was a good opportunity for a set of volunteers to pool in their time and resources to gather data and update the dashboard on daily basis to update the country and the whole world with the number of covid cases, recoveries, deaths and number of testings’ done across the country. Not only state wise but also district wise.
This mammoth task was taken by wonderful volunteers who work for a non-profit org at www.covid.org
Which recently came to an end on 31st October, 2021. For over 16 months, 300+ volunteers worked daily out of their comfort zone with around 4.4 billion website visits and gathered the data to put it on a single page with an attractive dashboard interface.
For a layman who isn’t well versed with navigating through such huge dashboards to get data for a single district, this website came as a blessing in disguise. The UI was very easy to use and one could literally get all the data required.
One can read more about the source of their data on their github link- https://github.com/covid19india/covid19india-react
Within months of starting this page, it became an instant hit. The links were being shared across social media. People relied on the data so much that, the pib website where the official data was being posted by the government of India was not receiving that much recognition as much covid19india.org did.
When the second wave of covid hit India, daily 3.5+ lakh cases and more than 4,000 deaths were being registered. The load on the volunteers to source the data and keep the dashboard running increased. It was managed well and couple of months later when the case load started decreasing, they also added the vaccination tracker which showed the number of doses administered and the percentage of India’s population vaccinated with 1st and 2nd dose.
Cowin Dashboard
On 16th January, 2021 India started the biggest vaccination drive in the history. With the aim of vaccinating the whole country against Covid. From day 1, only healthcare and front-line workers were eligible to get their doses.
As time progressed, the vulnerable population was made eligible to get their doses from 1st March, 2021 and gradually after wave 2, the population above 18 years of age were made eligible.
This meant only one thing, more and more data to be gathered and posted on the website. The Indian government gets the data from the vaccination centres across the country. The steps of updating the data are as follows; 1) You go to the centre.
2) You give your I’d proof (preferably Aadhar card).
3) The healthcare worker updates your detail on the Cowin website.
4) The data is fed into the Cowin’s API where it is later shown on the dashboard.
rthday, the Cowin dashboard (https://dashboard.cowin.gov.in/) came up with the live counter of vaccines being administered on real time basis. India hit a new world record of vaccinations on the same day. Vaccinating 2.5 crore Indians in a single day. Since then, the live counter has been active on the website and has been running well successfully.
India took 279 days to touch the record mark of 100 crore vaccinations with an average of 35.84 lakh doses administered on daily basis.
The GUI of the Cowin dashboard has improved over the time with an interactive dashboard, helping you to navigate plethora of data combined into one page with ease. Running down the cursor over the bar graphs or line chart one can very much get all the required data.
For students in the field of data science and analytics, this is one of the most interactive dashboards to go through and study the interface.
References:
1) https://www.covid19india.org/
