COVID-19 Analysis

Data is sourced from Our World in Data via their GitHub repository, connected directly in Power BI using a web connector so the report reflects the latest available figures on each refresh.

The report has three pages:

• Overview: global headline figures with KPI cards and a Deneb chart breaking down case fatality rates by continent
• Continent Trends: infection and mortality rates by continent over time
• Country Rankings: ranked country comparison with a toggle between Mortality Rate and Infection Rate

KPI cards are built with the HTML Content custom visual, allowing fully custom HTML and CSS styling within Power BI. Charts requiring more control than native visuals allow are built with Deneb, using Vega-Lite grammar to define the chart specifications directly.

This project was my first use of both Deneb and HTML Content visuals. Writing Vega-Lite specs in Deneb requires a different mental model to dragging fields onto native visuals — you define the encoding, scales, and marks explicitly, which gives much finer control over the output but has a steeper learning curve.

HTML Content visuals opened up styling possibilities that Power BI's built-in card visuals can not match, though generating the HTML via DAX measures takes some careful string construction.

Natural extensions would be a vaccine rollout page comparing rollout speed and coverage by country, and forecasting tabs using Power BI's built-in analytics pane to project trends forward.