Instagram Founders Launch Website to Track Rate of COVID-19 Spread

Instagram founders have launched a website to track the rate of coronavirus infection in USA.

Instagram has developed a website to track rate of Coronavirus spread.

(Photo: The Quint)

Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger launched a website on Sunday, 20 April, that helps track the rate of COVID-19 infections in the United States of America.

The website, RT.live, tracks Rt, which represents the effective reproduction rate for each state in the US. This gives an estimate of the number of people who can catch the virus by a single infected person.

Rt values over 1.0 mean we should expect more cases in that area, values under 1.0 mean we should expect fewer.

The website says that it gets the latest data from The COVID Tracking Project, which is a volunteer organisation that collects data from trustworthy sources and visualises it.

The website shows Rt values for all 50 states in USA.

We’re trying to take what is a complex topic and boil it down to a simple number that anyone can view from their home.

Kevin Systrom to Bloomberg

Bloomberg also reported that Systrom believes it’s more useful to look at the infection rate from a local angle, especially when the problem is at a global stage.

Systrom and Krieger worked together for Instagram up till 2018 when the duo quit Facebook in September 2018.