中国留学生每日更新英国疫情数据图成网红丨Student charts spread of coronavirus in UK

Back on March 5 as life was continuing relatively as normal in the UK despite rising concern about the spread of coronavirus, Leeds University masters student Wu Peng decided to start charting the growth in cases in this country to help people better understand what was happening with the epidemic.

The 26-year-old has lived in Leeds since last April where he has been studying international corporate law but is originally from Chengdu in China and had been taking a close interest in the spread of coronavirus across the world.

By March 5, the Department of Health and Social Care confirmed on Twitter that 115 cases had been recorded in the UK, up from 85 the previous day.

Wu says, "At that time, the total was 115 cases and I knew that because at that time the government wasn't taking much action it definitely meant the real number would be higher."

He posted what would be his first daily chart on Twitter that day in response to the DHSC message, setting out the number of confirmed cases against an exponential growth curve prediction. At the time, when asked what his prediction for the coming days was, he warned with what has proved to be some accuracy: "Every three days or so, the number doubles until something effective is done."

Wu's intention was simple. "What I do every day is to draw a chart based on publicly available government data in a timely manner so that everyone can understand the growth trend more clearly," he explains. "Insisting on doing this every day actually encourages everyone to continue to pay attention to the epidemic."

He set up a notification system to be alerted to the public release of the day's figures and was soon publishing his updated daily graph within moments of the government's figures becoming available, winning him ever-increasing plaudits from health professionals and ordinary social media users alike as the crisis has worsened.

From last week, a new line was added to his chart covering the number of fatalities that were now occurring as a result of the virus. He has also started a parallel chart recording how many tests are being carried out each day and the percentage coming back positive.

Wu says he did not expect the response he has online to the graphs.

"I'm surprised about that. It is a very simple job, a very easy job. Maybe it is because I do it every day. I just input the data into an analytics graph. I will continue to do the updates every day until the tide turns."

Source: Yorkshire Post

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