The world’s largest coronavirus tracker, developed by 17-year old Avi Schiffmann, is a one-stop-shop for COVID-19 related information and provides live updates on the number of confirmed cases, deaths, and recoveries caused by the pandemic globally, as well as an interactive map, information on the disease, and the option of subscribing to a newsletter that delivers daily updates to your inbox.
nCoV2019.live has been visited more than 700 million times to date and is yet another great example of teens getting more stuff done than actual governments!
High school student, Avi Schiffmann, taught himself to code by watching YouTube videos and unveiled nCoV2019.live in December 2019 – before coronavirus had been detected outside of China.
Schiffman’s site features live information, which is pulled from the World Health Organisation & the Centers for Disease Control data, amongst others and provides extremely accurate numbers relating to the pandemic.
Speaking about his creation, Schiffmann said:
“When I started this website, there was less than 1,000 total cases, they were all in the Wuhan area of China, and there was a lot of misinformation spreading. So I decided it would be cool to create a website and make it a central hub of information.”
“The main goal of (the website) was to provide an easy way to see the straight facts and the data, without having to make a website that was biased or full of ads. You shouldn’t have to go through government websites to download a daily PDF that’s probably out of date by the time you read it, and have to go through all kinds of complicated things just to see the straight facts.”
It’s not surprising that Schiffmann has been bombarded with offers to put ads through the website. One ad proposal, in particular, would have netted Schiffmann $8 million, but he turned it down. He says he could have made over $30 million if he’d put ads on the site, but insists that’s not his objective.
“I’m only 17, I don’t need $8 million…I don’t want to be a profiteer,” he said.
“In the future, I hope pressure is on the WHO” to make a tool like this, he said, “The responsibility shouldn’t be on some random kid, but it’s obvious that people want to know the statistics.”
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