For the latest COVID-19 statistics, updated in near real time, millions of people around the world have been turning to an interactive, Web-based dashboard created by a small team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. From its humble beginnings, that dashboard has become one of the world's most authoritative sources for the latest coronavirus numbers and trends. The project has filled an information vacuum, providing the most up-to-date, comprehensive picture of the virus' global scope and spread. The dashboard was born, as these things often are, under the influence of caffeine. "We were sitting around a table. We were all drinking lattes," recalls Lauren Gardner , 35, associate professor of civil and systems engineering at Johns Hopkins. This was back on Jan. 21. Gardner, whose specialty is modeling the spread of infectious diseases such as Zika , dengue and measles , had been paying close attention to early reports of a deadly new virus spreading in China. Lauren Gardner,
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