Microsoft launches interactive map to track coronavirus

Microsoft have released an interactive map that will give you the best sense of how the fight against the coronavirus outbreak is going. Spoiler alert it’s not going well.

Microsoft hosts the map on their Bing search engine site at https://bing.com/covid.

How does Microsoft’s coronavirus tracker work?

The map gives a high-level idea of the number of active infections per country, the number of infected persons that recovered and the number of fatalities for patients who tested positive for the coronavirus.

For the USA, Microsoft has the results broken down per state. You can even click on individual states or countries to drill down into specific videos and stories for a given data bubble on the map.

The numbers for South Africa are accurate as per the President’s announcement last evening. Still, there’s no indication of how often the data updates happen and what the specific sources are for the data represented.

Is the data accurate?

The maps pulls its data from a number of sources such as the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), and Wikipedia.

Take the news stories that surface via the tool with some scepticism, though, as the algorithm doesn’t seem to prioritise the latest news.

A quick check for South Africa brought up a news story confirming 38 cases of the coronavirus from two days ago. The number of cases has since risen to over 60.

Despite the shortcomings in bringing back relevant news stories, the numbers are in line with what WHO are reporting and is a useful tool for visually comparing the scale of the coronavirus outbreak quickly.

COVID-19 might just be Bing’s downfall

Needless to say, Bing being unable to bring back relevant news stories on its own map is not a great advert for the search engine that is trying be taken seriously, as a Google competitor.

Ultimately Bing’s business should be search results and the fact that they can’t even manage to find six relevant and timely links on their map just underline why they continue to live in Google’s shadow.

What is an excellent resource and should have been good marketing for Bing has ended up being an unfortunate reminder of why Bing isn’t our search engine of choice?

Speaking of Google, the search giant is promising to release its own coronavirus site today. Google promises the website will offer visitors information about the outbreak, information on how to avoid infection and local resources.

The latest updates can be found here.