Not sure the seller actually had what they claimed. But I eventually got my money back and got to keep the matrix.

It seems really basic - shouldn’t there be decoupling caps, current limiting resistors?

But add a Uno, a DS3231 RTC and some code and you have this:

An ISR on a timer handles the LED refresh (shifting row/column bits out to the 74HC595's). Periodically read the time, calculate the seconds until the end of Covid Year 0, convert that to a base 9 number, display that as vertical columns of LEDs, most significant on the right. 

I’m waiting to see that last LED go out.  And for 2020 to be over.

For simplicity, the time is set using the serial interface.