All Hands on Deck To Address Coronavirus

As the coronavirus grips our nation, numerous agencies and organizations are turning their attention to helping combat the pandemic, including offering resources to help monitor its spread and tips on combating the virus.  The response, across the public and private sectors, demonstrates how effective public-private partnerships can be when there is a common and clear goal.  In this blog, we’ve provided hyperlinks to different coronavirus resources, including research related to the virus and the various tracking resources. 

At the global level, the World Health Organization (WHO) has created a coronavirus resources page, which includes a map of reported incidents, guidance on protecting yourself and a page dedicated to dispelling myths about the coronavirus. In addition, WHO has released daily “situation reports” that document new reported instances of coronavirus infection. 

At the national level, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has maintained a COVID-19 resources page, which includes a map of cases in the U.S., a continuously updated summary of outbreak situation and instructions on what to do if you are sick

Johns Hopkins University has created an interactive web-based dashboard, hosted by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at the university, to visualize and track globally all reported cases of coronavirus in real-time.  The interactive map was first launched on January 22 and has become a frequently cited resource as the coronavirus has spread around the globe.  The site pulls data from WHO, CDC, European CDC (ECDC), National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China (NHC) and local news reports.  Read more about the founding and methodology behind the map in this blog post

COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) is a free dataset of over 29,000 scholarly articles, including over 13,000 with full text, about COVID-19 and the coronavirus family of viruses, which was created in response to a request by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy. The dataset was the result of collaboration by Microsoft, The Allen Institute for AI, The National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine, The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.  The dataset was made to be machine readable in hopes of utilizing it to develop artificial intelligence techniques that could be useful in responding to the pandemic.

A 17-year old from Mercer Island, Washington named Avi Schiffmann created a website in December 2019 to track global cases of coronavirus, pulling from the CDC, the World Health Organization and other organizations.  Read this interview with Schiffmann to learn more about his creation of the site. 

In addition to these resources tracking the coronavirus spread, there have been numerous online education tools released recently to help facilitate distance learning.  This Google document is an open-source resource list, compiled by hundreds of educators across the globe, of online learning tools, tricks and tips.