On a gloomy, windy Sunday afternoon in London, I started thinking about the amount data available on COVID crisis and how data journalists in various news, public and government organizations are presenting this data to the general public. Here’s what I found:
I started my search with ‘Covid’ on google, as you’d expect Google summarized lot of information and including data and statistics on SERP
1. Google & Google News
The more locations & statistics takes me to Google News page with data tables for countries and news, with interactive heat map based on Google Maps. Quite cool!
2. World Meters
High on google search ranking, World Meters kept things simple with basic charts & data points
3. UK government website
The charts on UK government website kept things simple with support from OpenStreet maps and an attempt to make charts & data interactive. I liked the fact that the raw data was available to download.
4. FT (Financial times)
The next one is FT, covered by the FT Visual & Data Journalism team. There is page dedicated to Conovirus data & charts with tons of right information & viz. The page also has link to Conovirus related articles which is free to read
There is another page dedicated to analyze & visualize data by country, where you can compare countries, change metrics & graph scales
FT also has a chart for excess death rate
There is lots more information & informative charts available on FT page
5. Guardian
Guardian has a page dedicated to Coronavirus with more focus on news than data. I found a page with Coronavirus world map data relevant for data.
The charts are kept simple, easy to digest and are not interactive
The more data link redirects to a new page with an interactive chart for US data
6. BBC
The BBC page shows a chart with a filter to zoom to a “continent” or “the world” by default. They also have a data table with horizontal bar chart, with a viz on number of new cases
7. Telegraph
Telegraph has a page dedicated for Conovirus data. Charts are simple with zoom in & out feature and an option to search data by UK post code
The world live maps page looks really interesting but I couldn't access as it sits behind a paywall (Free trial available, I didn't register)
8. NY Times
NY Times covers Coronavirus with a data page and corona virus map. The page is only accessible with a registration (no subscription required)
I should disclose, I am a paying subscriber of NY Times and was able to access the page.
The first chart on this page is an interactive world map
There are filters by cases by deaths, per capita and Hotstops too, which I really liked
There is also a table which can be filtered by country with a link to country map
9. Wall Street Journal
The WSJ also has a page dedicated for Coronavirus graphics. The map is overlayed with bubbles (assuming cases).
I couldn't view any further as other information is behind paywall. I don’t have a subscription.
There is a coronavirus free resource page with news & updates. The few charts I found on this page are focused on business and were simple. I am including one chart for reference, as they are not about cases & spread of virus
10. Bloomberg
The next one is business news website Bloomberg with a page dedicated to Coronavirus data.
The first chart focus on countries where the curve is flatten
This is then followed by huge world heatmap and trend on number of cases by country
Bloomberg also shows travel restriction information, which I did’t expect to see here. I have not seen this info being reported elsewhere (it may exist on other sites, I didn't with other charts).
The page also has links to other news and data points.
