Google has already released a number of COVID-related features on its Maps app, including noting potential transit delays due to the outbreak, the relative busyness of local businesses and tagging the locations of nearby COVID testing sites. Google announced yet another new feature which will inform users as to whether new cases of the virus are on the rise in the area they want to travel to.
Google Maps users can now enable this feature and see a color-coded map based on the number of cases per 100,000 people, as well as labels that indicate whether numbers are trending up or down.
This data will be available for all the 220 countries and territories that Google Maps currently supports. Where possible, the data is granular down to the city level, but that obviously depends on the numbers Google is able to pull in.
Google says the data comes from a number of sources, including Johns Hopkins, The New York Times and Wikipedia, which get their their information from local and intergovernmental government organizations. That’s the same sources Google pulls from when it displays COVID data on its search results pages.
This new layer is now rolling out for Google Maps on Android and iOS this week, so it may take a few days before you’ll be able to see it. It doesn’t look like Google plans to bring it Maps on desktop any time soon, though.
