Lands and Survey creates COVID-19 tracker

The Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission (GLSC) has created a COVID-19 Tracker for Guyana which offers a geographical display of confirmed cases in the country.

It shows where the cases are, the gender of the patients, age range, the number of deaths, recoveries and active cases.

The data is collected from the Ministry of Public Health dashboard and updated daily as new information is released; the information on the gender of patients is updated weekly.

The tracker has two parts –  the interactive map where persons can just click on the hotspots highlighted for all COVID-19 information – and a graph where a chart shows the recovered cases, deaths and active cases.

The tracker was launched in early May – two months after Guyana confirmed its first case of COVID-19.

Manager of Land Information and Mapping, Naseem Nasir in a recent discussion on the GLSC Facebook page noted that the COVID-19 pandemic affects everyone directly or indirectly.

Nasir said tracking COVID-19 on a map brings a different visual aspect of the health crisis and it also assists monitoring and mitigating the spread of the disease.

“We are working with the Ministry of Health, receiving data from them and putting the data on a map if you look at other territories the mapping aspect of the disease is a very important aspect,” Nasir said.

Geographic Information System (GIS) Analyst, Kishawn Critchlow said the idea behind the tracker is to inform the public on where exactly the cases are in the country.

“So we are informing the public where in the country these hotspots are for those cases so that they can thread lightly in reducing and flattening that curve of confirmed cases in the country,” Critchlow stated.

Critchlow further noted that the GLSC is also considering to create a mobile application to complement the tracker.

Guyana on June 11 recorded a total of 158 cases. The COVID-19 deaths remain at 12; to date, the total number of persons tested is 1, 920 with the number of negative cases being 1,762.