London, April 3 Researchers have created a web application that provides an overview of the coronavirus pandemic across the globe, in a way that is more interactive than other maps and statistics.
The app titled 'COVID19' is based on data from Johns Hopkins University in the US, the Danish National Serum Institute in Denmark, World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations.
"We began working on the app as a pet project, to deal with our boredom and inability to physically meet up. While Skyping one day, we wondered why we couldn't find a graph that portrayed the evolution of coronavirus cases in Denmark," said Phillip Bredahl Mogensen from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark, one of those behind the app.
According to the study, the app provides an overview of how COVID-19 is spreading and the number of people who have both passed away and recovered.
Statistics from every country on earth are available and readily compared. For example, in only a few clicks, one can see how Spain or Italy are faring with the pandemic compared to Denmark.
They also said that this is the first app that attempts to estimate suspected numbers - as opposed to reporting back confirmed positives from the test result.
"With the help of Danish and South Korean mortality statistics, we are able to provide an estimate of how many people were actually infected 20 days ago," explained Bredahl Mogensen.
"For example, on March 9, there were 92 confirmed cases in Denmark. We estimate that there were actually between 1,163 and 3,615 people infected. In other words, 10 times the number of people were infected as compared to the official statistics," he added.
The researchers used South Korean COVID-19 mortality data because the country has been dealing with the epidemic for a longer period of time and because South Korea has broader and more precise data sets than other countries.
"Even though the method is under development, and has yet to be validated, it presents an incredibly interesting estimate of the unknown extent of this virus," the authors wrote.
( With inputs from IANS )