Changing Metrics and Additional Resources

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic we've calculated Rt, which has been a useful measure of how quickly the virus is spreading. However, we believe other metrics are now a better way to track the virus. With that, we suggest you visit the following organizations which have alternative metrics:

  • COVID Tracking Project: this has been the source of our data from the beginning. They do not calculate Rt specifically, but they have a host of other metrics (eg hospitalizations, reported cases, etc.)
  • Epiforecasts.io: This group is run by the Centre for Mathematical Modeling of Infectious Diseases and created many of the methods we used for calculating Rt. They currently calculate Rt and if you’re interested in this measure we suggest viewing it here.
  • Delphi Group: This group is from Carnegie Mellon University – they have a wealth of different metrics which they combine to forecast COVID-19 indicators.

Please note none of these sites are affiliated with rt.live. Given the changing nature of the pandemic and the rollout of the vaccine worldwide, we are confident you are best served with a collection of resources like the ones we have listed above. As always, never rely too heavily on a single metric – instead, it’s important to triangulate among a set of metrics like the ones above to come to a conclusion. We thank you for your support and we wish you the best of health in 2021.

You can always access our previous Rt calculations here. You can also access the source code used for our Rt calculations and the dashboard.