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CovidVictoria is an independently-run resource. If you find this resource useful, you may show your support by making a donation at the link below. Donated funds are used to service running costs, and aid further developments to the platform.

Data sources

The data on this website is an aggregation of publicly available information, issued by the Victorian State Government. Mapping services are provided by Mapbox and OpenStreetMap. A full list of acknowledgements is provided below.

Victoria State Government, Department of Health and Human Services:
https://www.dhhs.vic.gov.au/

The Australian Government, Open government data:
https://data.gov.au/

Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), '3218.0 - Regional Population Growth, Australia, 2018-19':
https://www.abs.gov.au/

Mapbox:
https://www.mapbox.com/about/maps/

OpenStreetMap:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/about/

We are not affiliated, associated, authorised, endorsed by, or in any way officially connected with any of the above mentioned organisations. All data is procured under the premise that it is to be used for strictly educational, reporting and research purposes. All data is made available without expectation, or intention, of generating commercial benefit or financial gain.

© Mapbox © OpenStreetMap
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Contact

Care is taken to ensure that all displayed data is free of misstatement. If you spot an error, or have any other concerns or queries, please fill out the feedback form below.

Alternatively, please feel free to email me, or contact me through Twitter.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

Q: Where is the data sourced from?
A: Data is sourced from daily media releases posted by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). See 'Sources' tab for a full list of acknowledgements.

Q: How often is the website updated?
A: The website is updated daily in line with media releases from the Department of Health and Human Servinces (DHHS).

Q: What time is the website updated?
A: Updates to the website are implemented within a few hours of these media releases, which typically occur between 7:45am – 4:00pm. You may follow me on Twitter to be notified when new updates are live.

Q: Why isn't displayed data consistent with the DHHS interactive map?
A: The DHHS interactive map is often inconsistent with the latest media releases published by the DHHS. CovidVictoria is updated in-line with the latest media releases published by the DHHS, which leads to discrepancies between the DHHS interactive map and the figures displayed on this website.

Q: What does LGA stand for?
A: LGA stands for 'Local Government Area', and denotes the administrative boundaries of locally governing City Councils and Shires.

Q: What does the positioning of clusters reveal about the intra-LGA residential address of notified cases?
A: All clusters are positioned in the geographical centre of their corresponding LGA for exposition purposes – their positioning reveals nothing about the exact intra-LGA residential addresses of notified COVID cases. The government does not publish the exact location of COVID cases.

Q: Why doesn't the sum total of clustered data points reconcile with figures in the summary panel?
A: The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) categorises reported cases of COVID-19 using residential address provided upon case notification. No geographic data point is plotted when a residential address is not provided; or when the provided residential address corresponds to an overseas/interstate location. However, these cases remain within the borders of Victoria, and are included in state-level totalled statistics.

Q: How are 'new cases' determined?
A: The total number of new cases (as presented in the summary panel) is calculated as the daily change in total confirmed COVID cases, adjusted for the DHHS' retrospective reclassifications of the previous day's figures due to erroneous duplication of notified cases. On a per-LGA basis, 'new cases' figures are calculated as the net daily change in confirmed COVID cases, and are not adjusted for retrospective reclassifications unless these relcassifications result in negative daily counts. These are set to zero for ease of interpretability.

Q: Why doesn't the 'Change (24 hrs)' figure match between active and confirmed layers for a given LGA?
A: The 'confirmed cases' measure should be thought of as a running total of all COVID cases recorded. When a COVID-affected citizen recovers, the total number of active cases decreases for the corresponding LGA, however the total number of confirmed cases remains unchanged. This leads to discrepancies between the 24-hour change figures for a given LGA across active and confirmed layers.

Q: What does a negative 'Change (24 hrs)' figure imply with reference to confirmed cases?
A: Each day, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) adjust for erroneous duplication of recorded cases by reclassifying a proportion of new cases announced in their previous media release. In this context, a negative 24-hour change figure implies that the number of reclassifications in the previous 24 hours exceeds the number of new cases recorded in the previous 24 hours.

Q: What data is used to calculate population metrics?
A: Population metrics are calculated based on estimated resident population (ERP) as at 30 June 2019, as reported by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). You may access the relevant ERP report here.

Q: What does the pink/purple shading represent?
A: Pink/purple shading is unrelated to COVID data, and comes from a cosmetic overlay that reflects varying levels of foliage.

About

Enter, COVID-19. The greatest modern threat to our existence. The tangible manifestation of civilisation's greatest fear. The flaming meteor to end our unchallenged tenure on Earth. Didn’t Bill Gates predict a world-ending pandemic in his 2015 TedX talk?

“Sit down Bill!” the crowd had jeered,
“You can’t even save my Windows computer from viruses!”

Now the year is 2020, a global pandemic is afoot, and Bill Gates gazes smugly through trillionaire-tinted prescription spectacles. He shrugs his shoulders, and says “Well, I told you so”. Screw you Bill Gates, we've all prepared by watching the 2011-blockbuster, Contagion, and we don't need your help – immunocompenent Matt Damon will be our bridge over troubled waters.

And so, the virus began to spread. We monitored the news with morbid vigilance as COVID cases exploded overseas. We urged our friends and family to exercise caution as the first cases were notified in Australia. We complied with tentative unease as borders closed, and our overseas/interstate family members were left to fend for themselves. And worst of all, we watched on with horror as every hooligan and their extended family absconded with packets of toilet paper from our supermarkets.

Soon, everyone found themselves confined within their homes, and I found myself on break from university. Day after day, I reviewed the typical tabular presentation of COVID statistics put forward by media outlets and government websites. These statistics were grouped by local government areas (LGAs), most of which were unknown to me. It became clear that I didn't know nearly enough about Victoria’s administrative regions to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions from these tabulated COVID statistics, and so I began my search for a visual medium. It seemed obvious that a geographical representation of COVID would be the best way to communicate information about the virus, yet no matter how hard I searched, I couldn’t find a resource that was up-to-date and easy to use. And so, I decided to make covidvictoria.com.

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CovidVictoria is an independently-run, not-for-profit resource, providing visual documentation of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic in Victoria. The resource was produced to serve as a more digestible alternative to typical tabular presentation of COVID statistics put forward by media outlets and government websites.

A project by