Saima Ikram
Mark Zuckerberg, in a Facebook post, revealed that Facebook has teamed up with Carnegie Mellon University to keep a close eye and track the COVID-19 cases spread around the world. The new program aims to track the spread even in the countries that lack diagnosis facilities.
He revealed an interactive map that helps to track and identify people who are experiencing similar symptoms from coronavirus throughout the US. The data is matched with a survey the company is running with Carnegie Mellon University. The map shows you an estimated percentage of people affected by COVID-19 symptoms and can even be scaled down to an individual country level.
Just to clarify, the map identifies a percentage of people with COVID-19 symptoms, not necessarily confirmed cases. Facebook hopes that this data will provide useful insights and information regarding the virus and its patron. According to Mark:
Understanding how Covid-19 is spreading is critical for local governments and public health officials as they allocate scarce resources like ventilators and PPE, and eventually to decide when it is safe to start re-opening different places. Researchers believe these symptom survey maps can be an important tool in making these decisions.
Currently, the data is populated by using the samples of 18 years above in the US but starting this week, Facebook plans to go global.
You can check out the symptom map here: https://covid-survey.dataforgood.fb.com/
