CoVaTrack: Tracking The Enigmatic Vaccine

While the world awaits a COVID-19 vaccine with crossed fingers, we stepped up to build a platform that would help people track the progress. The progress of single most important vaccine of the century.

Empty streets, uninhabited offices, deserted tourist havens and a world on the brink of breaking down emotionally. We no longer take those vacations off with the family or those dining-out evenings with the better half or even a casual evening to knock off some weekday blues with friends. Our bedrooms have begun resembling our hostel dorms back in college and our cars looks like they might rust away from nesting permanently in the parking.

Lockdown, shutdown, partial lockdown, partial shutdown, containment zone, transmission, viral load, case fatalities – most of us have learnt more about biology in the past six months than in high school. As useful as it sounds, it has only burdened us with an eventuality – sooner or later we will all get infected. This, has sent most people into a state of depression with the rest clinging to what seems to be the best chance – a vaccine, a cure.

At CSM, especially after grounding the Odisha COVID Dashboard, we were optimistic that a solution is around the corner. We would often keep a track of vaccines, till it got so blurred and infinitesimal that we put our hands up and said, “We can’t track a thing this way!” Thus, came the idea of building a treatment and vaccine tracker that would have the world in its sight but India in its perspective. What followed then were endless meetings and brainstorming sessions on understanding and simplifying medical jargons and development and testing processes of vaccines and treatment. CoVaTrack was on its way of becoming a reality.

CoVaTrack is a one-stop destination for information on the production of the vaccine, updating on the facts while the pharmaceutical firms, researchers work towards finding a solution to stop the spread of the deadly Corona Virus, causing tremendous havoc, panic & distress around the world. The information about the promising endeavor being made to find a lasting cure instills hope and confidence in a safer tomorrow.

CoVaTrack contains a dedicated section for global statistics, vaccines currently in limited use, status of vaccines and treatments status in India and list of research bodies working towards various types of treatments. A section for FAQs was placed to ensure non-medico personnel are able to grasp the meaning of each types and process of vaccines and treatments. An in-built news tracker keeps you on the pulse of medical industry as it races against time for the vaccine.

The rich visualizations in a mobile-first user interface render the tracker user friendly and interactive experience. The tracker is developed using Softwares like open source environment (PHP, mySQL, HighCharts), emerging technologies and content management system taking data from various institutes. Even though we rely on the data published by these institutes, we put processes in place to ensure the data is verified and authentic. Our prediction model has been piloted inside the platform to identify a time frame of when these vaccines will move from one phase to other and subsequently to approval stage.

CoVaTrack is dedicated to millions of frontline workers who have placed themselves in the harm’s way to protect us from the pandemic. Through this CSR initiative, we would like to thank everyone who is doing their bit to bring back hope into this disheveled world. We are committed towards ‘breaking thought barriers’, to help the world heal.

CoVaTrack is here: www.covatrack.in/

AUTHOR:

CSM Editorial