NEW YORK (TIP): TrackCorona, a COVID-19 tracking website developed by two University of Virginia students, James Yun and Soukarya Ghosh, and friends at Virginia Tech and Stanford University, is proving to be a valuable public service for anyone who wants to know more about the development of the pandemic. The website went live in early February with only a smattering of clicks by people who already knew about the site. Now, more than 300,000 people in 193 countries have visited the website about 1.4 million times. “We’re averaging more than 40,000 users per day for the last week, with a record 50,000 users on March 12,” said Ghosh, a third-year computer science and mathematics major who helped lead development of the site. “We’re on trajectory for 50,000 more on the 16^th.”

TrackCorona provides up-to-date information about the spread of the virus, including infection and mortality rates, recovery rates and locations by country, with links to the latest news and accurate information. The student team uses data from the World Health Organization, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and other infectious disease information sources. The data is made visual with a near-real-time map that displays the growth of the pandemic.

TrackCorona is a nominee for the Social Good of the Year award by the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council; as well as for Innovator of the Year; and Student Entrepreneurs of the Year awards. The students are seeking funding to keep the site operating, as costs for cloud computing and other resources are running about $350 per day.