Get alerts when COVID cases rise in your Melbourne suburb with Home Assistant

hass-covid-local-alerts.md

Get alerts when COVID cases rise in your Melbourne suburb with Home Assistant

Using the State Government's postcode data, you can scrape active cases from your suburb and recieve notifications/alerts when the situation changes.

1. Add a CLI sensor

Update it to replace 3182 with your suburb's postcode:

sensor:
  - platform: command_line
    name: 3182 active COVID
    command: "curl -L 'https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTwXSqlP56q78lZKxc092o6UuIyi7VqOIQj6RM4QmlVPgtJZfbgzv0a3X7wQQkhNu8MFolhVwMy4VnF/pub?gid=0&output=csv' | grep ^3182 | awk -F, '{print $3}'"
    unit_of_measurement: cases

2. Add notifications for your phone (or other service)

Here's an example of an automation using the Home Assistant app to get updates:

automation:
  - alias: Notify change in COVID cases
    trigger:
      - platform: state
        entity_id: sensor.3182_active_covid
    action:
      service: notify.mobile_app_pixel_xl
      data_template:
        title:  St Kilda COVID cases updated
        message: "Now {{ states('sensor.3182_active_covid') }} active cases"

And it works great in Lovelace.

Whilst I wish I'd thought of this sooner, we're prepared if there's ever a 3rd wave of cases to hit our suburb.