IIT Hyderabad launches one-stop portal, covid19tracker.in, for COVID-19 updates

Hyderabad: For all those interested in finding latest developments and updates related to Covid-19 pandemic, including the Omicron variant, its prevalence and country-wide scenario, the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad has launched a comprehensive portal covid19tracker.in for relevant information of national, state-wise, and even district-wise levels.  

Earlier, covid19india.org  was the most popular for such information, in addition to the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare website. However, in August 2021, the creators of this website announced that they would no longer maintain up-to-date statistics after October 31, 2021.  

Realising how crucial this information is to Indians of all hues (researchers, students, and the public), the Director of IIT Hyderabad authorized a team of developers at IIT-H to carry on the work beyond November 1, 2021.

The outcome is covid19tracker.in, which is built using the public code base of covid19india.org website.

“IIT Hyderabad is delighted to host this website which will be an important resource for everyone interested in data related to the COVID-19 pandemic in India. Our site has attracted considerable traffic despite having been created so recently.  In fact, we have noted with pleasure that the Worldometers website for India uses just two sources: our site (www.covid19tracker.in), and that of MoHFW,'' Prof B.S.Murthy, Director, IIT-H said. 

A team lead by Prof Bheemarjuna Reddy Tamma and Prof Vidyasagar worked and developed this project.

The research team is confident that the Indian public can count on covid19tracker.in to provide uninterrupted and up-to-date data on all aspects of the pandemic.

“Currently, we have gone beyond the original website by including predictions for the future course of the pandemic, generated by the SUTRA Consortium of which IIT Hyderabad is a member.  Most recently, we have included the projections for the post-Omicron scenario as well. In future we plan to enhance the website by including a search feature to highlight trends and raise alerts as and when required. If resources permit, we will monitor not just India but other countries as well.  The emergence of the Omicron variant of concern shows that India cannot collect and monitor its data in isolation,” Prof M.Vidyasagar, FRS, IIT-Hyderabad explains.

Interestingly, covid19tracker.in, which provides information in most of the Indian languages, has graphs and statistics which are updated from time to time.

“We are sourcing data mainly from state bulletins, official social handles, www.cowin.gov.in website, and www.mohfw.gov.in website while updating case numbers, vaccination doses administered, the number of tests conducted, etc. in our covid19tracker.in website.  While the front-end of our website has the same user interface as that of the original website (covid19india.org), the back-end was developed in-house by a group of enthusiastic students of IIT Hyderabad and maintained by the staff members of Computer Center, IIT Hyderabad. The website has been hosted on a public cloud platform to make it highly scalable and responsive even when web traffic shoots up,'' says Prof Bheemarjuna Reddy Tamma, Chair, Computer Centre, IIT-H. 

According to the IIT-H research team, the portal has served over 18 million requests from a quarter-million visitors over the past 30 days.

Link to the portal: https://covid19tracker.in/

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