The most popular weather app now has a coronavirus tracking tool

The coronavirus outbreak is just starting to affect the United States, while other countries Europe are under pressure for a couple of weeks now. As the pandemic is taking over more regions across the globe, it's important to stay informed about the coronavirus developments.

The Weather Channel and IBM have thought about that and added a coronavirus tracking tool inside the weather app that's available on Android and iOS platforms. The information provided via this tracking tool is meant to help users keep up with the latest information offered by multiple official sources about the coronavirus spreading.

The new tracking tool is mostly aimed at US users, as developers confirmed that The Weather Channel app users will get access to information from official sources about the reach of the pandemic, “down to a country level in the United States.”

As far as IBM's involvement goes, all the real-time information provided via the coronavirus tracking tool runs on the company's public cloud and use IBM Watson to access data from WHO (World Health Organization) and various national, state and local governments.

With the new coronavirus tracking tools, The Weather Channel app users on Android and iOS will be able to see the following information:

• An AI-enhanced interactive "Incidents Map" of COVID-19 data and stats, including confirmed cases and more by U.S. state and by county, where available.
• A trend graph by state in the U.S. to view recent statistics, as well as data over time.
• Starting with U.S. locations and with additional global data anticipated to follow shortly, the tool will provide trend visualization, interactive mapping, news and information to help track the pandemic.
• The latest news and videos related to coronavirus from The Weather Channel editorial team.
• Additional details such as available public health information, patient education materials, locations of key healthcare clinics and testing centers and more, are anticipated to be added as available.

As IBM gathers more data in the coming days, users will be able to filter the information by country, region, state, and county level. The tool is available on desktop as well in the form of an interactive dashboard powered by IBM Watson.