Cover letter:

SBS News (digital) is part of the Special Broadcasting Service, Australia’s multilingual broadcaster and one of the most trusted media organisations in the country.

Australia is a multicultural country. More than a third of Australians were born overseas or have a parent born overseas, and it is our job to inform and educate all Australians with newsworthy, accurate information that is easy to understand.

With COVID-19, we knew our audience would want to know:

• The facts (particularly in a time of such misinformation)
• What was happening in their own backyard (localised infection rates, hospitalisations, vaccination rates) and
• How Australia compared on the world stage (and, eventually, where they could travel to internationally to see loved ones).

And so we set about creating interactives that would do just that.

The result was a 10-part+ series of COVID-19 interactives and ‘click-through’ infographics, mostly published between February 2021 (when Australia’s vaccine rollout began) to late 2021 (when the Omicron variant hit).

At least two pieces of work; How many COVID-19 cases are there in each Australian state and territory? and How to show proof of your COVID-19 vaccinations in Australia, were translated into at least 8 other languages with help from SBS’s Audio & Language division.

These 3 were among the top 30 best-performing articles of 2021:

• What are the COVID-19 vaccination rates in your local area?
• Where are you in Australia’s coronavirus vaccine queue? and
• How many people are in hospital with COVID-19 in Australia?

Team:

• Creative Developer: Ken Macleod
• Designers: Karin Zhou-Zheng & Jono Delbridge
• Features Editor: Kate Sullivan

Project links:

www.sbs.com.au/news/topic/covid-19-interactives