Anatomy of our battle against COVID-19 by Australian Broadcasting Corporation

This article, published on the anniversary of Australia’s first documented cases of COVID-19, uses a national dataset of every confirmed coronavirus case (a dataset built by our team) to tell the story of how Australia’s battle with the disease unfolded in its first year.
This story provided a forensic examination of how the pandemic unfolded in Australia, how well our government succeeded in keeping Australians safe – and at what cost.
We also crowdsourced personal stories from hundreds of readers using the Screendoor tool.
This project showed the media's role in responsibly and meaningfully communicating government data to the public during a crisis. This helped to deepen trust between the public and the government/public institutions, reduce fear, and encourage wider debate about public policy.