Announcing COVID Local, a COVID-19 Location Tracker

In March, a small team of our developers and engineers mobilized for a Modus Labs project that would use our skills to help with the pandemic. Using aggregated COVID-19 incidence data being made available by Johns Hopkins, we decided to create a platform that would help people be aware of daily COVID-19 incidence data in the locations that matter to them (U.S. only for now). Today, we’re proud to launch covidlocal.io, which cuts through the noise of big data to simply present useful updates.

The tool allows users to store locations on the web page, or you can sign up for daily email or SMS updates. This modest platform is in public beta mode, and more features may be added soon, but for now, we hope this helps people make informed decisions in this strange and confusing time.

U.S. travel restrictions vary from state to state as COVID-19 cases rise and fall. The question of whether it’s safe to travel at all depends on the local data. Americans may be planning trips for numerous reasons, cautiously, hoping to mitigate as much risk as possible. Are the hotspots getting worse or better?

Whether useful as a planning tool for travel, to keep tabs on a location where loved ones live, or for business planning; our COVID Local tracker allows you to easily keep track of the latest numbers in multiple locations and have daily case data at your fingertips.

The data is presented on the county level and the main metric is the 7-day moving average of active cases per 100,000 residents which controls for population density and is the key metric identified by the CDC for how active the disease is in a given area. We use a simple color-coding scheme of green, yellow and red developed by the CDC to interpret the results at a glance.

Future enhancements are planned for trend charting and expanding beyond the U.S. If you have any feedback about how this tool is working for you, we’d love to hear from you at covidtracker@modusagency.com.