- Rt.Live is a website built by Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, which tracks how fast COVID-19 is spreading
Rt.Live is a new website that tracks how fast COVID-19 is spreading in your state — which was built by Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, according to TechCrunch. And it is the first project that Systrom and Krieger launched since they both left Facebook.
“Rt” is a metric used for measuring the average number of people who have become infected. The higher above the number 1, the faster COVID-19 is spreading. When the RT is below 1.0, the virus is spreading in fewer cases in that area.
Rt.live screenshot
“Kevin has been writing and publishing open-source data analysis notebooks on how to calculate Rt on a daily basis. We wanted to take that work and visualize it so anyone can see how their state is doing at curbing the spread,” said Krieger in an interview with TechCrunch.
This project is intended to be useful to states as they consider when to reopen.
Some of the states that stand out include New York (0.54). This data suggests that the shelter-in-place orders has been working very well.
In my home state of Michigan, the shelter-in-place order has been effective as well as the score as the Rt was 2.65 in the middle of March and is now at 1.1.
