Covid near me
Is there Covid near you?
The NSW Government has been releasing data showing cases of Covid-19 by suburb. It’s quite interesting, but it just gives totals over time; it doesn’t tell you whether there’s been activity near you recently. My own suburb hasn’t changed the numbers since the data was first released over a month ago because the same four cases are still active, even though they are now old news in terms of being a danger to anyone walking down the street.
So, Actuarial Eye asked me to make a map that shows the recent activity on a map. ‘Sure,’ I said, having vast gobbets of free lock-down time available – ‘that’ll be simple’. It turned out to be less simple than expected thanks to the government API not working as advertised and errors in the underlying dataset (postcodes that don’t exist for example). But thanks to some timely intervention from a friend, we got there in the end.
Covid Near Me shows reported cases from the last 14 days as a default, or seven days if you wish. That gives you some warning if you are in the midst of a hot-bed of Covid activity. Right now there’s only scattered cases and so it’s probably less useful than it would be if we get hit with a full-on second wave in a week or two’s time.
Still, a fun undertaking and quite reassuring personally to know there’re no cases anywhere near me at the moment. So, I’m off to do the grocery shopping now…
When you go shopping, do you wear a mask. I go out in a mask and try to keep my distance, not all people do, wear a mask and keep their distance.. That is Tel Aviv. Love
Thanks a lot for the app
Is it updated daily as nsw health releases daily updates please?
It draws dynamically on the data published by NSW Health so as soon as they update it you can see it here. But that data itself comes with some caveats which I’ll copy in below:
“The dataset is updated daily, except on weekends. However, Publication of some data in this dataset is being delayed because the risk of gaining information about an individual in the dataset increases as the number of cases decreases.
The data is for confirmed COVID-19 cases only based on location of usual residence, not necessarily where the virus was contracted. The case definition of a confirmed case is a person who tests positive to a validated specific SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid test or has the virus identified by electron microscopy or viral culture, at a reference laboratory. Data reported at 8pm daily.
Case counts reported by NSW Health for a particular notification date may vary over time due to ongoing investigations and the outcome of cases under review thus this dataset and any historical data contained within is subject to change on a daily basis.
The underlying dataset was assessed to measure the risk of identifying an individual and the level of sensitivity of the information gained if it was known that an individual was in the dataset. The dataset was then treated to mitigate these risks, including suppressing and aggregating data.”