Covid-19 website creator ‘shocked’ to be made an MBE

Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. It was just something I did for a bit of fun at the start but there was a point, maybe six months into it, where I was getting a lot of messages and realising how many people were actually using it John Frace “I was sharing that online for a little bit and someone recommended that I should make a website so you could bookmark it and visit it every day, so I did that, and it grew quite substantially from there.” Since then his TravellingTabby.com coronavirus tracker has had millions of hits, showing statistics for Scotland as well as the whole UK, and becoming a vital resource for both the public and NHS workers alike. Mr Frace was made an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to public health communication during Covid-19, in recognition of how important his data hub has become, and he said it was a “huge shock” to open the letter telling him the news. “It was just something I did for a bit of fun at the start but there was a point, maybe six months into it, where I was getting a lot of messages and realising how many people were actually using it,” said Mr Frace, who lives in Dunoon, Argyll. “People were not just looking out of interest, but they were going on to make risk assessments about how they behaved which would affect their health and their family’s health.” The website shows graphs of everything from vaccinations administered and infection rates, to the number of people in hospital and how many people have ever tested positive for Covid-19.