COVID-19 Third Wave Threat Emerging Globally
Illuminated City-by-City in UN-Habitat Daily Trending Site
Toronto, March 23, 2021 – Early in the pandemic, UN-Habitat, a United Nations Agency, commissioned a global city COVID-19 tracking site available to anyone in the world: https://unhabitat.citiiq.com/. Monitoring over 1,600 cities, the data clearly displays the 14-day trends by city. This recent trending data confirms a renewed surge of COVID-19 cases thought to be arising from a range of variants even while most countries in the world are progressing with the vaccination process.
It is more critical than ever to produce accurate data about the pandemic that is made available to leaders and the public at local levels.
"As authors of the CitiIQ measurement platform, a unique diagnostic of 35 areas of a city's health and wellbeing, we value the importance of objective data at a city level,” said Don Simmonds, CitiIQ’s Chief Executive Officer. “The numbers give rise to concerns about the COVID-19 third wave now impacting cities in varying degrees around the world."
The UN-Habitat COVID-19 tracking platform, powered by CitiIQ, has added time-series motion graphics to reveal the changing patterns of COVID-19 cases by city across the globe: https://unhabitat.citiiq.com/.
The colour code reflects trending improvements (green) and risks (red).
Stable, At Risk, and Improving values are also formatted as a stacked bar graph that compresses over time to reflect the dynamic changes in cases apart from the geography noted in the map versions. The data is displayed over a user-selected range of weeks and months.
About COVID-19 Tracking Site
The city-based COVID-19 Readiness and Responsiveness tracker platform uses global metrics to provide critical and often unavailable information from cities around the world. The tracker provides information that is critical for protecting populations and informing resilience and recovery strategies and future responses to global pandemics. Using a range of machine learning and analytic tools, CitiIQ makes extensive use of automation techniques to collect COVID data on more than 1600 cities every day.
The platform is capable of sourcing, translating, and communicating both the COVID-19 Readiness and Responsiveness scores of cities as well as daily trending patterns.
About UN-Habitat
UN-Habitat works in over 90 countries supporting people in cities and human settlements for a sustainable urban future. The agency has been focusing on urban development for over 40 years. Working with governments and local partners, its high impact projects combine world class expertise and local knowledge to deliver timely and targeted solutions. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes a dedicated goal on cities, SDG 11 – to make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. Under the New Urban Agenda, there is a clearly defined and renewed dedication among the global development community to ensure our cities expand in a sustainable way. Visit www.unhabitat.org and follow @UNHabitat for further information.
For further information contact:
Milton Friesen, Managing Director