【Overseas Event Introduction】The COVID Tracking Project: 0 to 2M API Requests in 3 Months

The "Jamstack Conference" with a history of over 10 years is hosted by "Netlify", the creator of Jamstack. Developers from all over the world gather to discuss the latest website design and development concepts based on Jamstack. The language used for presentations is English, but this blog will introduce it in Japanese.

 

Jamstack, which is still relatively unknown in Japan. We hope that people in Japan will feel more familiar with Jamstack!

The year 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic was intensifying.

 

An issue has occurred in America.

 

The accuracy of information issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States has become statistically unusable. As a result, a project was formed by volunteer members to consolidate statistical information from individual state insurance agencies.

 

In this article,

 

• Project Formation Process
• Reasons for building the project site with Jamstack

 

We will explain about it.

- Project Formation Process -

 

1. Lack of population (number of tests)

The positivity rate can be calculated by using the number of tests as the denominator, rather than the population of a certain region. For example, even if there were only 2 positive cases in a village with a population of 1,000, if there were 10 tests conducted, the positivity rate would be 20%.

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States initially announced the number of tests and positive cases. However, they stopped reporting the number of tests midway. In other words, it became impossible to know the positivity rate because the sample size was unknown.

 

On the other hand, each inspection agency was required to report the positivity rate to the state insurance authority. Therefore, we divided the work and collected data on the number of tests from all health department websites in the United States, compiled it into a spreadsheet, and made it public. From there, we tried to estimate the spread of infection and positivity rate within the country.

 

2. Infection Tracking Project

As this was reported in the media, volunteers were recruited to take action. One of the speakers, Ms. Erin Kisein, responded to this call.

 

She thought that quick response was necessary...

 

• Contact your talented developer friend and release the site in 4 days.
• Strengthening the design of the website within the next month

 

The CDC, a prestigious national institution, was unable to provide data, so a private project was established and became the sole source of comprehensive infection rate data in the United States.

 

3. Meeting the Needs of Society

 

Eventually, more media and local stations will rely on this data to understand the social impact and local effects of the coronavirus infection, as well as the comparison with other states. The project has become a significant "public data rescue" without anyone noticing.

 

And finally, hundreds of staff members participated. Among them were public health experts, data scientists, designers, and other specialized professions, as well as general individuals who said, "I may not have any specific skills, but I want to help!" and dedicated their time to discovering and inputting data.

- Reasons for building the project site with Jamstack -

 

4. Website Renewal

As a result of rapidly gaining attention and talent since its launch, the site was rebuilt into a more professional site after one month. The following site is still in operation today.

 

https://covidtracking.com/

 

This site is created with the following technologies.

 

• Hosting: Netlify
• Built with: Gatsby
• Data: Google Sheet
• CMS：Contentful

 

As a result, we were able to stabilize a service that receives over 2 million API requests per day in just 3 months.

 

5. Site Robustness

 

On April 29th, it was discovered that the traffic to the website has drastically increased. On this day, the White House mentioned the data from this project and announced a policy.

 

Noteworthy is the fact that at this time, the project stakeholders did not feel any changes on the site. Without being affected by the surge in traffic, the site operated as usual.

 

As of March 7, 2021, this project has completed its role. Currently, a message is displayed stating "Refer to the data provided by the government."

 

6. Summary

This real-life example of being able to build a socially meaningful website and operate it stably in just 3 months is valuable.

 

She stated in her speech that "it wouldn't have been possible without Jamstack."

 

How was it?

 

Could it be said that the following facts were confirmed not so much by technical learning, but rather by the retrospective of the speaker, Ms. Erin Kisein?

 

Jamstack has,

 

• Speed
• Stability
• Traffic Processing

 

In terms of advantages, there is something that cannot be found anywhere else!

 

Thank you for reading until the end.

 

Human Science Co., Ltd. offers unique solutions for web content and platforms using the combination of "document creation know-how" and "the latest web development technology (Jamstack)" that other companies do not have.

If you are interested, please contact us here!

Human Science Co., Ltd.

https://www.science.co.jp/document/jamstack.html

 

Source of this document: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryngYoHXNfQ