Get the accurate information on Coronavirus - Updates and live dashboards

Cagliari, Sardinia venue for the first America's Cup World Series event - April 2020 © Richard Gladwell / Sail-World.com

With several major sailing events coming up over the next few months, and with news organisations not being the most reliable source of information and politicians trying to put various spins on a given set of facts, we have identified several sites which seem to be up to date with live information on the progress of coronavirus and COVID-19.

Sail-World has been following these sites since last Wednesday - they seem to have the basic information and are ahead of the "latest" news reports.

The coronavirus will have a big impact on sailing events in a number of ways - if you are attending as a competitor, or if you are going to turn up and watch as a fan.

The way to use these dashboards is to find the area of interest to you, and then follow the trend on a day by day basis.

Currently, Italy has the highest number of deaths from coronavirus after China and the highest percentage death rate of just under 4% of notified cases. In most other regions the death rate is a lot lower. The latest update from Italy is that the Prime Minister has declared their hospitals to be "overwhelmed", however planes are still being allowed to land and take off from Milan airport for all destinations. As 20% of those with the coronavirus show no symptoms but have the virus and are carriers - the Italian policy ensures the virus will spread throughout the country and world.

Italy is worse than Iran on all the key indicators - positive cases - deaths and with about half the rate of recoveries. It is hard to see how the ACWS Sardinia can proceed given the upward trend of cases and deaths, and over the next couple of weeks check if the key indicators drop as the quarantine has, or doesn't have any effect. The major regattas planned for northern Italy are clearly at risk of cancellation.

The Government of Sardinia tried to block "invaders" as their Mayors have labelled the coronavirus refugees, by imposing a similar lockdown as applied in Northern Italy but the Federal government stopped them from applying the lockdown. The airport and port are still operating in Sardinia so there is little impediment on movement and spread of the virus. A two week quarantine period now applies in Cagliari for all who arrive from an infected region in Northern Italy. It is not known if this applies to international visitors. There is a UKP200 fine for breaking the quarantine - which is apparently being openly flouted.

From what we can see the Olympics may proceed as planned, as the indicators in Japan are relatively low, and now don't seem to be in the increase.

There should be no impact on the America's Cup, as the indicators in New Zealand are very low and there have been no deaths. Additionally the authorities seem to be able to track the index carriers - so others who may have been in contact can be identified and quarantined.

In both events people coming from badly infected areas will probably be excluded. Whether that situation is acceptable to the IOC for athletes is another matter.

This is the dashboard used by major news services John Hopkins University Desktop version

You will see Positive cases on the left by country and then Deaths and Recoveries on the right.

This is a second live map click on the play button to activate

Every 24 hours a doctor based in England gives a narrative which is reasonably easy to follow and he explains some of the trends and what could happen next based on what has been seen previously in China and Korea. Go directly to his Youtube channel to get the latest update.

Before the lockdown was imposed in Northern Italy there was a significant movement of population out to their holiday homes in Sardinia.

This story came from a Sardinian newspaper that puts out an email edition - there were three or four stories on it today, Tuesday.

You need to open this in a Chrome browser with auto translate turned on. Click here to read the latest edition of the Sardinia Post

Of course at this stage, the regatta organisers have to say that the regattas are all go, because if they say otherwise - then they are up for big cancellation costs. However if they are instructed to cancel by Government decree or Regulation that is a different situation. This situation would appear to be close to implementation with a ban on all sports events in Italy, with some exceptions.

The other issue is with entry to England for the second ACWS, currently UK has an advisory out on anyone from Italy showing the flu symptoms must register and self-isolate. You can see all this by watching Sky TV news from the UK on a smart TV, or using Apple 4 TV or similar, or on Youtube.

You will need to check with your local Government Heath website to display the various health advisories and governmental reactions.