As coronavirus infections spread around the world, Microsoft is offering us an easy way to track them by country and by state with the aid of the Bing search engine.

As ZDNet reports, Microsoft has launched the Bing COVID-19 Tracker, which works a lot like Google Maps, but with the focus solely on coronavirus cases and their outcomes.

The interactive map shows the location of coronavirus cases with a circle, the size of which identifies the number of cases. On the left, there's a running total of the confirmed, active, and fatal cases. At the time of writing there's been 169,673 confirmed cases, 85,338 active cases, 77,767 recovered cases, and 6,518 fatal cases.

Below the totals is a list of countries and US states. Clicking on a US state, for example, will focus the map in on that location, list the cases breakdown, and offer links to video covering the coronavirus news there. For anyone concerned or curious about what's happening with coronavirus locally, this is a good place to start.

The data Microsoft is using has been sourced from the World Health Organization (WHO), the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC). As for how the tracker came to exist, Microsoft's Michael Schechter, General Manager for Bing Growth and Distribution, explained, "Lots of Bing folks worked (from home) this past week to create a mapping and authoritative news resource for COVID19 info."

PC Magazine