Avi Schiffmann is a 17-year-old computer enthusiast living in Washington state in the US who has built one of the most comprehensive coronavirus websites in the world.
Schiffman, a high school student, launched his website in December 2019 after taking note of the Covid-19 outbreak in Wuhan, China and it’s subsequent spread around the world.
The breathtakingly simple site cross-references data from sources like the World Health Organisation, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention alongside regional health authorities through web scraping.
It tracks the number of people affected in various countries, the number of deaths and crucially, the number of recovered cases. The site updates itself every 10 minutes and presents the data clearly and unobtrusively. There aren’t any adverts on the site and the numbers are colour-coded to make it easier to follow.
‘I thought it would be cool if there was a website that could pull in all the information from all kinds of sources,’ Avi told Today.
‘I mainly wanted to create something that would show the data as accurately as possible because there has been a lot of misinformation.’
The teenager, who lives with his mother in Mercer Island, near Seattle, continuously updates the site and says he relies on feedback from users to spot bugs and issues.
You can find Avi’s website for yourself here and although the site doesn’t host any adverts you can click a link to send a donation to Avi to help him keep the site going.
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