Interactive infographic shows real-time spread of coronavirus outbreak

The dashboard, from John Hopkins University, allows you to track COVID-19 cases in real-time.

Speaking this week, Dr Bruce Aylward of the World Health Organisation (WHO) stated his belief that the world is "not ready" to properly deal with the spread of the coronavirus. As of Wednesday 26 February, 81,245 cases of the coronavirus have been confirmed across the globe. "Big conclusion for the world is — it's simply not ready," Aylward, who recently headed a fact-finding mission in China, said. "Folks, this is a rapidly escalating epidemic in different places that we've got to tackle super-fast to prevent a pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of people in China did not get COVID-19 because of this aggressive response." With new cases arising at a rapid rate, a team of researchers at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, has created an interactive dashboard that allows users to track the spread of the coronavirus in real-time. "The dashboard illustrates the location and number of confirmed COVID-19 cases, deaths, and recoveries for all affected countries," notes a statement issued by the research team. "It was developed to provide researchers, public health authorities and the general public with a user-friendly tool to track the outbreak as it unfolds. "All data collected and displayed are made freely available, initially through Google Sheets and now through a GitHub repository, along with the feature layers of the dashboard, which are now included in the Esri Living Atlas." You can check the tracker out at this link. Cillian De Gascun, The Director of the National Virus Reference Laboratory, recently spoke to JOE about the virus, explaining exactly how it spreads, what we know about it so far, and the potential threat to Ireland. You can check out our conversation with Cillian here.