IIT-Hyderabad team launches go-to Covid tracker
Sangareddy: When Covid-19 pandemic struck India in early 2020, it became imperative to have a single consolidated “go-to” website for relevant information at national, State, and even district-level. The website http://covid19india.org was started at that time and was the most popular website for such information, in addition to the Ministry website. In August 2021, the […]
Sangareddy: When Covid-19 pandemic struck India in early 2020, it became imperative to have a single consolidated “go-to” website for relevant information at national, State, and even district-level. The website http://covid19india.org was started at that time and was the most popular website for such information, in addition to the Ministry website.
In August 2021, the creators of this website announced that they would no longer maintain up-to-date statistics after October 31, 2021. Knowing how crucial this information is to Indians of all hues (researchers, students and the public), the Director of IITH authorised a team of developers at IITH to carry on the work beyond November 1, 2021. The outcome of this efforts is the website covid19tracker.in http://covid19tracker.in , which is built using the public code base of http://covid19india.org website.
Expressing delight on this milestone during the launch, Prof BS Murty, Director, IITH, said, “IITH is delighted to host this website, which will be an important resource for everyone interested in data related to the pandemic in India. Our site has attracted considerable traffic despite having been created recently. In fact, we have noted with pleasure that the Worldometers website for India uses just two sources: our site, and that of MoHFW. I congratulate Prof Bheemarjuna Reddy Tamma and his team and Prof Vidyasagar for his mentorship for bringing up such an impressive site in such a short time. The Indian public can count on IIT-H to provide uninterrupted and up-to-date data on all aspects of the pandemic.”
Speaking about the objective of the covid19tracker.in http://covid19tracker.in, Prof M Vidyasagar FRS, professor at IITH, said: “Currently, we have gone beyond the original website by including predictions for the future course of the pandemic, generated by the SUTRA Consortium of which IITH is a member. Most recently, we have included the projections for the post-Omicron scenario as well. In the future, we plan to enhance the website by including a search feature to highlight trends and raise alerts as and when required. If resources permit, we will monitor not just India but other countries as well. The emergence of the Omicron variant of concern shows that India cannot collect and monitor its data in isolation.”
Talking about the technical attribute of the portal, Prof Bheemarjuna Reddy Tamma, Chair, Computer Centre, IITH, said, “We are sourcing data mainly from State bulletins, official social handles, www.cowin.gov.in http://www.cowin.gov.in website, and www.mohfw.gov.in http://www.mohfw.gov.in website while updating case numbers, vaccination doses administered, the number of tests conducted, etc. in our covid19tracker.in http://covid19tracker.in website. While the front-end of our website has the same user interface as that of the original website (covid19india.org http://covid19india.org ), the back-end was developed in-house by a group of enthusiastic students of IITH and maintained by the staff members of Computer Center, IITH. The website has been hosted on a public cloud platform to make it highly scalable and responsive even when web traffic shoots up. The website has served over 18 million requests from a quarter-million visitors over the past 30 days.”
Also Read: ‘Omicron cases may peak on Jan 27, 2022’
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