Peng's intention was simple. "What I do every day is to draw a chart based on publicly available government data in a timely manner so that everyone can understand the growth trend more clearly," he explains. "Insisting on doing this every day actually encourages everyone to continue to pay attention to the epidemic."
He set up a notification system to be alerted to the public release of the day's figures and was soon publishing his updated daily graph within moments of the Government's figures becoming available, winning him ever-increasing plaudits from health professionals and ordinary social media users alike as the crisis has worsened.