Designer, coder and cool dude: Teenagers behind Australia's COVID-19 data tracking website

The young brains behind the site CovidbaseAU for tracking Coronavirus (COVID-19) in Australia have been revealed in quite a dramatic way as the teenagers and close friends, who created the site, got their first doses of the Moderna vaccine in Melbourne on Thursday (September 23).

The CovidbaseAU site tracks COVID-19 data in Australia, including in-depth breakdowns of vaccinations, state-wise cases also tells about the tests and Covid-related events.

The official Twitter handle of the CovidbaseAU posted an image of 14-year-old Wesley with Jack and Darcy, both 15 years old. On the Twitter page, the boys also wrote that they looked forward to joining the 25.30% of age group 12-15 in Victoria who had received at least one dose of vaccine.

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During their interaction with ABC TV on Friday, they said, "Being really interested in data, we decided to take what we've been doing and create something with it. We spend a lot of time on it to try to make it as comprehensive as possible," said Jack, the data collector who came up with the idea of the site. Jack has created all the charts seen on the site and has been responsible for tracking the data over time.

The official site of the CovidbaseAU revealed how Jack came up with the idea of creating a data-driven platform after the Covid pandemic wreaked havoc in July 2020 globally. He said he began to learn different sources and started to track the data on an excel spreadsheet.

He continued to track data until around February this year when he, with two other close friends came up with the idea to take the data that he had collected and make it mainstream.

Darcy is the coder, who makes "all the magic" happen on the site. "All throughout 2020 Jack kept showing me all the data he had collected. And around February 2021 I suggested that he put all the data on a website. So he asked me to make it. Next thing I knew I had about 400 charts to embed," he said as quoted by the CovidbaseAU site.

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The site called Wesley a "cool dude", who make the advertisements, logos, etc. "But my most important role and the role they desperately needed the most is MORAL SUPPORT. When their hopes were down, when they were about to give up, when they needed motivation I was the one who totally dragged them out of the dumps and forced them to get a GRIP and start working again," said Wesley on the app's site.

What is CovidbaseAU?

CovidbaseAU has been tracking COVID-19 statistics since April 2021, breaking down Australian and global data on infections, hospitalisations, deaths and vaccinations.

The site is designed to bring the majority of publically available data into one central source as the stats in Australia are reported very differently depending on the state and territory.

The site also states that it's not official data and they cannot guarantee that every data point is 100% accurate.