Briefly Reviewed: National Coronavirus Information Design on Twitter

I can't think of another occasion where literally every country on the planet has cause to publicly report the same grim information, every single day. The Olympics come close, I guess.

At first I only followed the UK and Scottish virus tweets, but after seeing a tweet from Kuwait with a wildly different design, I wondered what other countries were doing. What can I say? Coronavirus intersects with everything we do and everything we're interested in – and in my case, it's information design.

So, let's take a spin around the globe:

UPDATE on coronavirus (#COVID19) testing in the UK:

As of 9am 29 March, a total of 127,737 have been tested:

108,215 negative.
19,522 positive.

As of 5pm on 28 March, of those hospitalised in the UK, 1,228 have sadly died. pic.twitter.com/Yjy0zQdF8u

— Department of Health and Social Care (@DHSCgovuk) March 29, 2020

🇬🇧 The UK has an impeccably-designed infographic that simply repeats the tweet text, which is good for accessibility, but provides little additional insight. Oddly, it emphasises the number of negative tests over positive – not very useful without knowing the rate of testing. Then there's the use of "... have sadly died" which attempts to convey sympathy but feels poorly constructed and out of place.

L’aggiornamento della situazione alle ore 18 del #28marzo:https://t.co/p2DIxdA1FE#coronavirus #covid19italia #COVID19

— Ministero Salute (@MinisteroSalute) March 28, 2020

🇮🇹 Italy doesn't provide any information.

The Health Protection Surveillance Centre has been informed of 294 new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ireland, as at 1pm, Saturday 28 March.

There are now 2,415 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Ireland.

— Department of Health (@roinnslainte) March 28, 2020

🇮🇪 Ireland has no infographic, just the stats.

تعلن ⁧ #وزارة_الصحة⁩ عن تأكيد إصابة أربع حالات جديدة ب ⁧ #فيروس_كورونا_المستجدّ⁩ COVID19 ليصبح الإجمالي 195 حالة pic.twitter.com/WYJXnMBLE7

— وزارة الصحة - الكويت (@KUWAIT_MOH) March 25, 2020

🇰🇼 Kuwait goes all-in with a specially-designed bilingual infographic, with active, recovered, new and total cases, along with those discharged from quarantine and still in ICU. I don't love the layout but it's still very impressive.

תמונת מצב עדכנית: pic.twitter.com/6Lwo0zv5j9

— משרד הבריאות (@IsraelMOH) March 29, 2020

🇮🇱 Israel also has an infographic packed with data; but it's completely inaccessible, with zero information in the tweet text. Also, the infographic appears to be a low-res screenshot of a PDF from an iOS device.

🔊#코로나19 국내 발생현황(3.29.)

📌서울 구로 소재 만민중앙성결교회, 현재까지 확진환자 총 13명 확인
📌3.29. 0시 기준, 신규 확진자 105명 중 해외유입 관련 사례 41건(39.0%)
📌유럽 및 미국 지역 입국자 공항 도착 후 반드시 집으로 귀가해야 pic.twitter.com/d4UBkpsECD

— 질병관리본부•1339 (@KoreaCDC) March 29, 2020

🇰🇷 South Korea isn't much better. The tweet text is different from what's in the infographic, which itself is a poorly-cropped screenshot.

#衛福編編報報 ⏲發文時間：2020/03/29
❗新增15例確診，14例境外移入、1例本土❗https://t.co/G2RDAolTCJ pic.twitter.com/QnQdMGr3xa

— MOHW of Taiwan (@MOHW_Taiwan) March 29, 2020

🇹🇼 Taiwan provides the crucial new case numbers in the tweet text, with the infographic detailing their origin (largely imported) and status.

| Datos actualizados |
↘️
En la presente jornada, se realizaron 372 tests diagnósticos, con 30 casos positivos y 342 negativos.

Al día de hoy, de los 2926 análisis realizados, se confirman en total 304 personas con #Covid_19 en Uruguay, de las cuales 9 personas están en CTI. pic.twitter.com/MafQaoKOAc

— MSP - Uruguay (@MSPUruguay) March 28, 2020

🇺🇾 Uruguay keeps it simple with all the information in the text. The infographic is just for the date.

#Atualização - O @minsaude atualiza a situação do #coronavírus no Brasil - 28/03
▶️3.904 casos confirmados
▶️114 óbitos
▶️2,9% de letalidade
Todos os estados registraram casos e dez apresentaram óbitos: AM, CE, PE, PI, RJ, SP, GO, PR, SC e RS.
Saiba mais: https://t.co/UYm3jliCGA pic.twitter.com/v3PPIxHD6B

— Ministério da Saúde (@minsaude) March 28, 2020

🇧🇷 Brazil combines an overview in the tweet text with a comprehensive infographic that packs a lot in.

#COVD19 update for B.C.:
- 884 cases
- 396 recovered
- 17 deaths
- 36,643 tests complete https://t.co/HNFiSpjAix
Latest news: https://t.co/OtymOx1LvZ

— BCCDC (@CDCofBC) March 28, 2020

In the US and Canada, reporting is done at the state and province-level:

British Columbia also keeps it simple, with a typical embedded link. Unfortunately the feature image isn't very relevant.

#COVID19 in CA, by the numbers:

🔷 4,643 positive cases
🔹 923 Community-acquired cases
🔹 3,720 cases acquired through person-to-person transmission, travel, repatriation, or under investigation
🔹 101 deaths: 100 CA residents, 1 non-CA

More numbers ➡️https://t.co/WSfsMVVIPp pic.twitter.com/NRLaTwx3o0

— CA Public Health (@CAPublicHealth) March 29, 2020

California is very much on the same lines, but with a generic update image.

As the pandemic has progressed, the impact of daily updates has diminished, even as the numbers grow higher and higher. We've all now moved onto dedicated tracker websites with exponential and logarithm graphs and doubling times. But there's still a place for these official updates, and it's a fascinating window into the priorities of health authorities around the world.