In an effort to keep general populace informed of the spread of the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, Microsoft has rolled out a live dashboard to track the COVID-19 pandemic. The web portal is available as a part of the Bing search engine and keeps track of the active cases, recovered victims and fatalities world-wide.
The tracker can also be accessed through Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari web browsers.
Michael Schechter, General Manager for Bing Growth and Distribution at Microsoft revealed in a statement that folks at Bing had been working from home on the tracker during the past week in a ZDnet report on Sunday.
The infection statistics for each country are provided through credible sources such as World Health Organisation, US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and Europe Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. The site currently sites the number of total confirmed cases as 170,532, the active cases as 84,558 and deaths as 6,516.
The tracker is quite basic in nature. On clicking on a specific country, the tracker sources updated photos, videos, published articles as well as the statistics of the pandemic in the country. A click on the US provides a state-wise division of the cases as well. The current stats on US reveal 3782 cases, with California topping the state wise list at 247. The tracker also has a quite lucid mobile interface. The map appears on top of the screen with the stats on the bottom.
Microsoft announced the launch of the tracker two days after US President Donald Trump said that Google had been working on a COVID-19 related portal for US citizens. That particular portal too has been launched, screening website for those who wish to be tested for COVID-19. It may provide free tests after recording data about users’ travel history and health symptoms. In addition to this, the site built by Verily, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. provides the associated risks and information about the disease.
