16 months. 300+ volunteers. 4.4 billion website visits. Numerous dashboards and projections driven by our data. Keeping India informed about Covid19.

All powered by the goodwill of a collective that came together and stuck together for the greater good.

And now it’s time for the curtains to come down.

As it stands now, covid19india.org will be stopping updates to our website and APIs by 31st October, 2021.

Why are we stopping our operations?

(a) We are a voluntary collective: No formal organization, no employees, no hierarchy - just a group of people who turn up every day to keep this going! With our work and personal lives limping back to normalcy, we believe it’s time for us to look ahead and focus on them.

(b) Tracking Covid19 data is a long-haul activity: We expect cases to be reported for the foreseeable future. But as a voluntary initiative, we can’t keep this running indefinitely. Having committed the last 16 months to this cause and seen through the 2nd wave, the team feels that October 2021 is a reasonable date to sunset the initiative, especially as there are many other credible public sources of information now.

(c) Credible alternatives: When we started this initiative, there were very few reliable sources for Covid data in India. That has changed now. MOHFW and ICMR maintain websites with Covid statistics. International organizations like Johns Hopkins University also have Covid data initiatives. Unlike the early days, official sources and format of state level Covid data in India have also stabilized over the last many months. We hope that any vacuum created by our absence will be filled soon.

What will happen to the data and website after 31st October 2021?

While there will be no new data updates after 31st October, the website and our APIs will still be available to reference past data. We advise analysts and other dashboards that feed off our APIs to start planning their transition to an alternate data source. We will provide more guidance on our APIs and data sources at an appropriate time.

Walking into the sunset

We are walking into the sunset, but it’s not time for the final goodbye yet. We will continue to track and keep all of you updated till the end of October 2021. During this time, we will be available to address your queries on our APIs, data operations or even general comments. You can reach us at hello@covid19india.org or via Twitter DM.

We hope that our humble efforts contributed a trickle to the Covid19 response in India.