PANAJI
What started off as a humble effort to educate and create awareness
on the Coronavirus triggered pandemic and bust the fake news
around it, a web app created by young Goan techies, some of them
junior engineering students -- Minimalist Coronavirus tracker -- has
progressed remarkably netting close to 2.3 million users.
Permitting users to track the latest status on global COVID-19
situation including identifying geographical hotspots and locating
testing as well as treatment facilities, the app also got recognition
and endorsement from NITI Ayog, the Government of India planning
body which replaced the erstwhile Planning Commission.
"On the 30th March, we had 7 lakh visitors, and we've served over
22 lakh users by now," said 19-year-old Shrey Keny, one of the five
techies who built the app.
The motive behind building the app which they did "in a few hours"
while participating in a hackathon at the BITS campus in Zuarinagar
in February this year, was to safeguard the Goan community from
the canards about the pandemic and the barrage of quack remedies
for the disease that were wildly floating around on social media and
everywhere.
"We had no intention of making any economic benefit out of it. We
don't have it even now," Keny told The Goan, adding that funds,
rather the lack of it, ironically propped up a huge predicament and
nearly pushed it offline.
"With the large traffic the app began to get, it started costing us
money for the web space. Initially we chipped in, but with traffic
growing exponentially by the hour we were forced to send out an
SOS through the app itself for donations," Keny, a second year
student at the Padre Conceicao College of Engineering, said.
"Now we have been getting help from some people and we don't
need donations. Also we will soon give away all the donations to
organisations which are working on the ground in the battle against
Coronavirus. We will make public where all that donation money is
paid out," Keny said.
Asked if they intend to monetise the app, Keny replied in the
negative.
"Not as of now. We haven't given it a thought yet," he said.
The app, Keny said is mobile-friendly and nearly 99 percent of the
users have accessed the app through their smartphones.
It relies on authentic sources of information and data and is updated
multiple times everyday.
Processed data is sourced from Johns Hopkins
and covid19india.org.
Users who access the app get a heat map of the world in a default
dark mode from where he/she can see areas that are endemic, even
in their own country, state and also neighbourhood.
"For instance if a case of a positive patient is reported in say Panaji,
the heat map will show you how far the location is from the nearest
testing or treatment facility which is GMC," Keny said.
It also has options which provide news, tips, latest statistics and
graphs.
Apart from Keny the five other techies who teamed up to have the
app running are: Niket Kamat Satoskar, who works at Bank on Juno,
Bangalore, Hrishikesh Bhandari, student and co-founder of
UnknownX, Sanket Marathe, student and cofounder of UnknownX,
Nishant Tilve, 4th year student at Goa Engineering College and Salil
Naik, a 2nd year student at GEC.
HOW TO USE IT: When you open the (https://corona-
virus.netlify.com/) URL, on Android smartphones, you get a prompt
to install the App. iOS users have click “add to home screen” option.
An interactive heat map pops up which displays COVID-19 cases,
including deaths and cured cases, worldwide in the form of location-
sensitive dots on the map. Tapping on these dots provides users
more localised data of the specific area.
