Jericho students build COVID-19 central database in 3 weeks

CovidCentral.org allows users to search by zip code for testing locations, donation information and food distribution centers.

News 12 Staff

May 24, 2020, 2:13 AM

Updated 1,676 days ago

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Looking for the closest COVID-19 testing center near you? Four juniors at Jericho High School can help you find it.
The students say they wanted to help the public during crisis and did so with a website they created.
"There was no one central database that people or programmers or researchers could access, so we wanted to create one central hub for all of this information," says Davesh Valagolam.
That’s how CovidCentral.org was created. It allows users to search by zip code for testing locations, donation information and food distribution centers.
"I think the hardest part was getting all of the data because we have so many data points and we're constantly looking for more data points that we can add," says Daniel You.
It took the teens three weeks to build. They say 5,000 people have used it in the last 30 days. Even Microsoft reached out to them to share information since it too was creating a national testing center database.
The students say they want to add vaccination sites when the time comes.