nCov2019: an R package for studying the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic

Area of Science:

• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Bioinformatics

Background:

• COVID-19 remains a significant global public health threat.
• Existing data resources lack convenient visualization and historical data tools.
• The nCov2019 R package was developed to address these limitations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To provide accessible COVID-19 statistics and visualization tools.
• To facilitate data exploration and interactive analysis for researchers.
• To offer up-to-date information on vaccine and therapeutic development.

Main Methods:

• Collected stable, reliable COVID-19 case data from authoritative sources.
• Aggregated historical and recent data by country and province.
• Integrated medical progress information on vaccines and therapeutics.
• Developed R interfaces for data operation, presentation, and visualization.
• Included a dashboard for coding-free data exploration.

Main Results:

• As of January 14, 2021, over 91 million global COVID-19 cases were reported.
• India surpassed 10 million confirmed cases, following the USA.
• Multiple epidemic peaks were observed across various countries.
• 51 vaccines and 54 drugs were under development, with 14 vaccines in pre-clinical trials.

Conclusions:

• The nCov2019 package delivers comprehensive statistics and visualization tools.
• A Shiny web application enables researchers to monitor epidemic spread.
• This package enhances researchers' ability to stay informed about the pandemic.