Google has announced that it has updated its Google Maps app with essential information as to how to safely travel from place to place during the pandemic. The application now features popular times for travel, COVID-19 alerts in transit, and COVID checkpoints in driving navigation.
Key among these is a new COVID layer in Maps, which shows critical information about COVID-19 cases in an area so you can make more informed decisions about where to go and what to do.
Simply open Google Maps, tap on the layers button on the top right hand corner of your screen and click on “COVID-19 info”. Users will then see a seven-day average of new COVID cases per 100,000 people for the area of the map you’re looking at, and a label that indicates whether the cases are trending up or down. Color coding also helps you easily distinguish the density of new cases in an area. Trending case data is visible at the country level for all 220 countries and territories that Google Maps supports, along with state or province, county, and city-level data where available.
The data featured in the COVID layer is imported from multiple authoritative sources, including Johns Hopkins, the New York Times, and Wikipedia. These sources also include data from public health organizations like the World Health Organization, government health ministries, along with state and local health agencies and hospitals. The COVID layer starts rolling out worldwide on Android and iOS this week.
Google Maps is available for free and requires iOS 11.0 or later or iPadOS 11.0 or later to install and run
Via blog.google