Google Maps to show Covid-19 outbreak cases in your neighbourhood

Google Maps has long been a crucial mobile tool for people to navigate most parts of the world. Now, it is all set to bring a new feature to help people avoid traveling to areas with a high density of Covid-19 cases and in turn curb the spread.

"This week, we’re introducing the COVID layer in Maps, a tool that shows critical information about COVID-19 cases in an area so you can make more informed decisions about where to go and what to do," Sujoy Banerjee Product Manager, Google Maps said.

Google Maps will offer a seven-day average of new Covid-19 cases per 100,000 people for the area of the map the users look at. Additionally, it will have a label that indicates whether the cases are trending up or down.

Furthermore, Google Maps will offer colour coding so the users can easily distinguish the density of the new Covid-19 cases in a particular area.

Trending case data is visible at the country level for all 220 countries and territories that Google Maps supports, along with state or province, county, and city-level data where available, the company said.

The Covid-19 outbreak data sourced from World Health Organization (WHO), regional government health ministries, along with state and local health agencies and hospitals. This large tract of information is further refined by Johns Hopkins, the New York Times, and Wikipedia and is finally fed to the Google Maps' Covid-19 layer.

It can be noted that Apple and Google, earlier in the year released the Covid-19 exposure notification feature for both iOS and Android phones. It is already available in select global regions, but yet to be made available in India.

Must read | 10 key things you should know about Apple-Google's COVID-19 contact tracing app

Until then, people at least in India can rely on Google Maps to make their travel plan and avoid venturing into Coronavirus outbreak zones.

Google Maps will soon offer the Covid-19 info layer. Credit: Google

Here's how to see the Covid-19 cases in nearby areas on Google Maps
Step 1: Just open Google Maps, tap on the layers button (see in the picture above) on the top right-hand corner of the screen.
Step 2: Click on COVID-19 info. It will also have a label that indicates whether the cases are trending up or down

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