Photo: Getty Images
What have you done to assist others during this coronavirus pandemic?
A 17-year-old high school senior created a website that allows users to track to the spread of the virus.
Avi Schiffman is the man behind this site and he created it before many Americans were even aware of what coronavirus was. His goal was to create a website that monitors cases and provide useful facts on the virus.
Since late December, the website has made more than three million visitors and continues to stay extremely popular as the rest of world becomes concerned with Covid-19.
"I thought it would be cool if there was a website that could pull in all the information from all kinds of sources," Schiffman said. "I mainly wanted to create something that would show the data as accurately as possible because there has been a lot of misinformation."
The website collects data from local health sources and facts checks with the World Health Organization and the CDC. When visitors are first on the site they are given a list of quick facts about coronavirus. This includes number of confirmed cases, number of cases outside of China, and number of people who have recovered. It also includes the number of countries affected and the number of people who have died.
Schiffman - the self-taught coder - created a program to make sure the website is updates every ten minutes and commits at least six hours a day to improve the website.
"I'm always adding new features. It's going to adapt as it goes along," he said. "In the future it might be less interesting to know there are five cases in France. We might be more interested in knowing the percentage increase from last week to this week."
Schiffman hopes his website will help the way the world handles Covid-19.
"It is really concerning how unprepared the world is," he said. "In the future the world needs to be a lot more prepared for a pandemic."
Since making his website, Schiffman is happy to know others feel like his website is helping him worldwide.
"Most of my emails are really cool. One of my favorite emails was this guy that was traveling in Beijing and he got quarantined there and he emailed me saying how he used my site all the time to get information," said Schiffman. "There are a lot of people who use my website if they are going to travel and they want to know if they are going to be safe. It is really neat to see all that stuff."
To see his website and to follow the numbers of cases yourself, PLEASE CLICK HERE.