'It's bittersweet': Crucial COVID-19 data tracker shutting down after three years
CTV
The COVID-19 dashboard created by a team of academics at Johns Hopkins University will be shutting down in March, three years after it launched right when infections began to explode worldwide.
Let’s go back to March, 2020. That sentence is nightmare fuel for most people.
The entire globe was shutting down as COVID-19 spread. There was intense fear and uncertainty as people became sick. What used to be an innocuous trip to the grocery store unleashed a wave of anxiety over becoming infected, and spreading the disease to others.
And it felt impossible to keep up with the number of confirmed cases, as they climbed globally.
That’s when a data tool emerged out of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore that provided comprehensive and visual up-to-date information on global case counts and deaths due to COVID-19.
The COVID-19 dashboard was first launched in January 2020 and tracked confirmed cases globally. It was created and run by academics at the university at a time when countries like the U.S. had a mere 245 confirmed cases. It provided crucial, easily accessible information to the world’s population. Everyone from major news outlets to households relied on the dashboard.
Nearly three years later, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Centre announced the site would be shuttering on March 10, 2023.
As other organizations, such asthe U.S. Centersfor Disease Control and Prevention(CDC),have launched their own tools, it was decided the dashboard should come to a close.
